Hugo Jonker

This is a followup of my previous post on printing at the OU, due to new printers being installed.

The new process is somewhat easier:

• Add new printer
• Choose LPD and give as name the print queue IP address
• Choose to install a driver from file, and download the Konica Minolta driver for the C368 (which covers a whole range of Konica printers)
• Set the options according to the documentation for Macs
• Finally / most importantly, make sure to submit print jobs under your acronym.
  • for command-line programs: set up an environment variable CUPS_USER. Set it to be your acronym, i.e. export CUPS_USER=acro.
  • for generic purposes: lpoptions -dPRINTER -o requesting-user-name=ACRONYM
• Now you’re ready to print!

As mentioned before, DisplayLink works over USB3.0 connection. Hooray!

Except that the current driver is hogging unfortunate amounts of CPU. ~2% when nothing’s happening, but up to 80% when switching windows. I noticed it because of harsh lag. I mean, my computer isn’t the newest on the block, but it still should be pretty awesome. Typing in an online form should be trivial, not something that causes delays…. but it wasn’t.

Getting frustrated with the lag, I’ve uninstalled the driver for now. Life immediately sped up.

Following up on my previous instructions, this time the full story – including double sided printing.
update 2017-06-28: additions to clarify some points (there was some confusion for me after a reinstall, hopefully this fixes things).
Edit 2017-10-23: New printers, see new update.

• Go to the “add printer” dialog
• Choose LPD printer, add the name.
  Name is something like MFP-XXX-A0YYYY. XXX for my building is HLR – my printer is MFP-HRL-A09950.
• Download the C360 printer driver (PPD) from the Konica Minolta website (I found multiple options, ended up using the file KOC360UX.ppd)
• Use this printer driver. Configuration:
  • paper source unit: PC-408
  • Finisher: FS-529
  • Punch Unit: none
  • Saddle kit: none
• Now you need to set up authentication. With thanks to:
  here:
  1. Configure the printer normally as LPD – write down the name you choose eg. CASACRISTO
     IMPORTANT: Choose the driver Generic Postcript/FoomaticEdit: don’t, use the regular ppd as explained above.
  2. Open a terminal and stop CUPS.
     sudo service cups stop
  3. Edit /etc/cups/ppd/CASACRISTO.ppd
     Adding these 3 lines just before the last line:
     Edit: that means: make sure these 3 lines are the last in the file. A newline at the end of the last one of these ends the file.

     *cupsFilter: "application/vnd.cups-raw 0 minolta"
     *cupsFilter: "application/vnd.cups-command 0 commandtops"
     *cupsFilter: "application/vnd.cups-postscript 0 minolta"
     

  4. Create /etc/cups/ppd/CASACRISTO.km (enter your own tracking number instead of 1234).
     Edit:I used the pincode for scanning here, and the name of the printer, i.e. MFP-HRL-A09950.

     ACCOUNT_NAME="casacristo"
     ACCOUNT_PASSWORD="1234"
     ACCOUNT_COETYPE="0"
     

  5. Create /usr/lib/cups/filter/minolta with this content:

     #!/bin/bash
     source /etc/cups/ppd/${PRINTER}.km
     
     echo -en "\033%-12345X"
     echo -en "@PJL JOB\015\012"
     echo -en "@PJL SET KMSECTIONNAME = \"${ACCOUNT_NAME}\"\015\012"
     echo -en "@PJL SET KMSECTIONKEY2 = \"${ACCOUNT_PASSWORD}\"\015\012"
     echo -en "@PJL SET KMCOETYPE = ${ACCOUNT_COETYPE}\015\012"
     echo -en "@PJL ENTER LANGUAGE = POSTSCRIPT\015\012"
     
     cat -
     
     echo -en "\004\033%-12345X\015\012@PJL EOJ\015\012"
     echo -en "\033%-12345X"
     

  6. Make it executable: sudo chmod +x /usr/lib/cups/filter/minolta
  7. Restart CUPS: sudo service cups start
• To print doublesided: choose tab “advanced”, not tab “page setup”.

The OU is using Kensington DisplayLink docking stations. They’re pretty nifty: one USB plug gets you internet, audio, and video. Under windows, that is :s.

After googling a bit, it turns out that DisplayLink did not release any drivers for the USB 3.0 version for Linux. Why? Because they support HDCP, a copy-protection measure for displays. And they have not (yet?) figured out how to preserve that type of copy protection and have open source drivers (nor, apparently, preserving that with closed-source drivers).

There’s at least one person looking into getting USB3 DisplayLink working via Linux. And it kind of sounds like he’s trying to hack HDCP in the process, just because he wants to use his hardware to actually do something. Ugh.

UPDATE (2017-02-07): Woohoo! Solution! There’s an Ubuntu display driver available from Displaylink. See http://support.displaylink.com/knowledgebase/articles/684649-how-to-install-displaylink-software-on-ubuntu. It requires kernel v3.16, which you can get from Ubuntu 14.04.2 onwards. (Thanks to new colleague Fabian for finding this out!).

In a nutshell:

• Make sure you’re running linux kernel 3.16 or above
• Download driver-installer
• Install a signed kernel, boot into signed kernel
  sudo apt-get install linux-signed-generic-lts-$VERSION – currently, version is “xenial” but you can check which is the latest by using filename completion (i.e., press <Tab>) and picking the newest one.
• Install DKMS: sudo apt-get install dkms
• Execute the downloaded installer:
  sudo ./displaylink-driver-$version.run
• Unplug your monitor cable and give the system 10-20 sec to resetup the monitor via the USB3 port.

Sidenote:
Using the actual USB3 port on my system instead of a USB2 port increases the speed sufficiently to allow internet, sound, webcam and display all over one port. In retrospect, it’s kind of obvious that even just running internet and sound over it would become challenging for video conferencing. Great detecting there, Sherlock me.

Update 2017-02-17: If you’re updating the kernel, the installed driver might no longer work (happened to me). In that case: sudo displaylink-installer uninstall to remove the driver, reboot, reinstall the driver by sudo ./displaylink-driver-$version.run and you’re good to go again!
You don’t even need to reboot after reinstalling the driver.
I’m not sure if you need to reboot at all, but I figured better 20 secs extra and sure about having purged the previous install than lingering in limbo.

Thanks to:
– http://displaylink.org/forum/showthread.php?t=1748&page=16
– http://airlied.livejournal.com/80516.html

Here’s the conundrum: to load slides into BlackBoard Collaborate (the Open Universiteit’s online teaching environment), I need Apache OpenOffice (AOO). To collaborate with people who work in MS Office (most of my colleages, most of the students), Apache OpenOffice is not good enough. Libreoffice (LO) is.

So I need the two side-by-side on Ubuntu. Which isn’t easy.

1. Getting Apache OpenOffice to work with Collaborate

• sudo apt-get purge libreoffice\*
• Download openoffice and dpkg -i the necessary files (don’t forget the desktop-integration subdir!)

If you install AOO before removing LO, then the install isn’t complete. Even though you can use AOO, Collaborate cannot. So purge your LibreOffice :s

2. Getting LibreOffice back on your system without destroying things

DO NOT INSTALL LibreOffice FROM THE OFFICIAL REPOSITORIES!
It fails and leaves your package database in an inconsistent state. I had to manually solve the problem by using

• dpkg -l | grep libreoffice to check which packages there were, and
• removing these with dpkg --purge.

The convenient command ended up being:
dpkg -l | grep libreoffice | cut -f 3 -d ' ' | xargs sudo dpkg --purge

That wasn’t quite enough to fix the database — there was a remnant of another package in the way. Removing that one (dpkg --purge python3-uno) addressed that, and then apt-get was happy with me again.

So what to do? Here’s how: download the latest LibreOffice, and install LO from the downloaded DEB files (tar -zxvf $downloadedfile; cd $LOdir/DEBS; sudo dpkg -i *deb). That works, and you now have the two side by side :)