Linux on Lorenzo Bolla

Errors printing PDFs with CUPS

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This is another of those posts to not forget. If printing a PDF file with lp prints a blank page with error messages like:

ERROR: configurationerror OFFENDING COMMAND: setpagedevice STACK: --nostringval-- ...

the problem is probably that your PDF has a certain page size (let's say letter) but your printer expects another (let's say A4).

Check your printer settings and your PDf (with lpinfo pdffile) to verify. If this is the case, print with this command instead:

Broadcom 43xx driver install in Arch Linux

Tue, 31 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

This is a vintage post to remind me how to install b43 drivers on Arch Linux for my "shiny" Belkin PCMCIA card (dated 2002…).

First install the firmware extractor: $> pacman -S b43-fwcutter.
Then install the firmware itself: $> yaourt -S b43-firmware.

Check dmesg. You should see something like:

Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PMNLS ]

and lsmod | grep b43:

b43 330774 0 bcma 19281 1 b43 mac80211 341044 1 b43 cfg80211 147429 2 b43,mac80211 ssb 42167 2 b43,b44 pcmcia 31182 2 b43,ssb mmc\~~core~~ 72742 2 b43,ssb

dwm restart

Fri, 08 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

dwm is a wonderful window manager for X: it's small, fast and stable.

The only thing I missed, until today, was the possibility to restart it without losing my X session (i.e. all the open windows, etc.). Restarting dwm is something you might need to do often, as it does not have config files: changes are done by recompiling the sources.

The trick is to execute dwm in background and sleep forever! Take a look at the last two lines of my .xinitrc:

Escape sequences for rxvt

Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

I'm posting this info because I had a hard time searching for it on the internet.

If you are using rxvt (or urxvt), and you want escape sequences to work as in xterm, you need to specify them in your .Xdefaults.

Here are the codes I had to add to have vim working properly on rxvt (I use alt-left_arrow and alt-right_arrow to navigate through tabs):

\*Rxvt\*meta8: false \*Rxvt.keysym.C-Left: 033\[1;5D \*Rxvt.keysym.C-Right: 033\[1;5C \*Rxvt.keysym.M-Left: 033\[1;3D \*Rxvt.keysym.M-Right: 033\[1;3C