Using xsane with a Canon CanoScan LiDE 60 on Debian Etch

I got an inexpensive flatbed USB scanner and was disappointed with the bundled (Windows-only) software, so I tried it on Linux. Debian Etch installs xsane by default, but it would not recognize the scanner. I tried a whole bunch of things but nothing help, until I accidentally started xsane from a root terminal, and it “just worked”, despite the warning from xsane about running as root.

Stop GEdit opening FTP files as read-only

I use Debian’s “Places -> connect to server…” dialog to setup connections to a couple FTP servers. Copying and such like work fine, but when I try to use GEdit, it always opens the file read-only. I can “Save As” to the exact file, so it wasn’t a permission problem. The trick is in some totally obscure config file. Here’s the (in GUI) steps to fix it:

1. Run gconf-editor
2. Open the tree to /apps/gedit-2/preferences/editor/save
3. Edit writable_vfs_schemes
4. Add ftp to the list

Voila. Gedit saving FTP. Via the kaylus on the Ubuntu Forums, but it is the same in Debian Etch.

VMWare Server on a headless Debian Etch

I recently had to install VMWare Server on a server that didn’t have the GUI bits installed.  This is the list of additional packages that need to be installed for VMWare to install:

apt-get install psmisc libxrender1 libxt6

Then it will install, and the VMs can have GUI even though the host doesn’t!

VMWare server will not run after Debian Etch updates

VMWare didn’t start after I installed the latest Etch updates. The error message is printed to the terminal, which is pretty useless if you’re starting it from the GUI. Anyhow, the fix is pretty easy:

apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
/usr/bin/vmware-config.pl

I guess the update had a new kernel and VMWare needed to re-install its hooks.

Custom java parameters for Tomcat on Debian Etch

The correct place for custom java parameters on Debian Etch is in /etc/default/tomcat5.5: look for the line:

CATALINA_OPTS=”-Djava.awt.headless=true -Xmx128M -server”

I usually bump up -Xmx (my server is just for Tomcat) and add -Xss2m.

Custom Server Header for Tomcat in Debian Etch

If you are using Tomcat to serve pages directly (i.e. not through Apache), it will send as server header of “ApacheCoyote/1.0 which I do not like. To change this, go into the /etc/tomcat5.5/server.xml file and in the appropriate tag, add an new attribute:

server=”NCSA/1.0a6″

Or whatever name you would like it to send. In the same spot, you can add the

URIEncoding=”UTF-8″

Which is necessary for full Unicode support.

Network interfaces for a Debian Etch guest under VMWare

I’m using Debian Etch as a guest OS under VMWare. When you copy the VM (to another machine or another instance on the same machine), VMWare wants to give it a new UID (you should let it so you don’t end up with duplicate machines). A side effect is that you get a new ethernet MAC address. In Debian Etch, a side effect of that is that it thinks you have a new network card but it doesn’t forget about the old network card, so instead of the network interface being eth0, it is now eth1. And the next time you copy the VM, it is eth2, and so on.

It is really a pretty simple fix, once you know where to look. The clue is that udev is what is remembering the old MAC address. In my VMs, the addresses were in:

/etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules

It is just a plain text file. Delete the lines with the old MAC addresses and change the last one to be eth0.

Tomcat on port 80

I tried using rinetd to run Tomcat on port 80 but then you do not know the original ip address. Using iptables keeps the original IP address. The magic incantation that worked for me is (each should be a single line):

iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -d localhost -p tcp –dport 80 -j REDIRECT –to-ports 8080iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -d dotted.ip.address.here -p tcp –dport 80 -j REDIRECT –to-ports 8080

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -d dotted.ip.address.here -p tcp –dport 80 -j REDIRECT –to-ports 8080

Strangeness with hwclock

So far, the only glitch with Debian is that hwclock needs the -directisa parameter. I’m just in the process of switching to Debian at work, and the machine there is fine.

Install VMWare server on Debian Etch

These are just my notes for installing VMWare server since I need to do it on a bunch of machines.

Load the prerequisites for VMWare server’s vmware-install.pl script (it should be a single line):

apt-get install libx11-6 libx11-dev libxtst6 xinetd wget linux-headers-`uname -r` build-essential gcc binutils-doc make manpages-dev autoconf automake1.9 libtool flex bison gdb libc6-dev-amd64 lib64gcc1 gcc-2.95-doc

Extract the downloaded file:

tar -xvzf /root/VMware-server-1.0.2-39867.tar.gz

Get some serial numbers by filling out the form:

http://register.vmware.com/content/registration.html

Run vmware-install.pl with the defaults for everything except NAT networking which should be no.

Add the following to /usr/bin/vmware (on the first blank line):

export VMWARE_USE_SHIPPED_GTK=yes

The VMWare icon is under Applications/System Tools.