HOWTOs
From MesoscopicWiki
(Wirelessly) Print to our color printer in MH339 from a computer running Windows Vista
1. Go to Control Panel -> Printers -> Add a Printer. Here you are presented with a choice. Choose Add a network, wireless or Bluetooth printer. Don't bother waiting for the computer to search, just click the computer I want isn't listed.
2. Choose to add a printer using TCP/IP.
3. Leave the first field (if you have it) on Autodetect. For the hostname, type in chromo.mines.edu. Windows will now spin the gears and search for the printer, but it will eventually take you to a page asking for more information.
4. You'll now see a page that says The device is not found .... Choose the option for under Device Type for Custom and click the Settings button.
5. Make sure the Port name and Printer name are set to Chromo.mines.edu. Set the Protocol to LPR. Leave the Port number as 9100. Under LPR settings, type in color and select LPR byte counting enabled. Click OK to continue. This takes you back to the "need more info" page. Click Next.
6. You should now be at Install the printer driver. Choose HP from the manufacturer list and hp color laserjet 2550 PS as the printer. Use the currently installed driver if you already have it and click Next.
7. Unselect Set as default printer and pick a name for the printer. I used "MPL color printer". Click Next and it should finish installing. Print a test page to make sure it is all working.
Make sure that if you want to print to this printer, select it in your printing options inside the application you are printing from. If you need visuals, this page has a nice walkthrough. Just start at Step 9 and use the names I suggest above, not theirs.
Wireless printing with Windows XP
1. Go to Control Panel -> Printers -> Add a Printer.
2. Choose "Add local printer attached to this computer".
3. Choose "Creat new port", and from the associated drop down menu, choose "Standard TCP/IP Port".
4. A warning screen pops up, click the "Next" button.
5. Now you are presented with two fields to fill in. In the top field labeled "Printer name or IP address", type in the IP address of the printer: 138.67.12.47. The bottom field will be filled in automatically.
6. Now additional port information is requested. You have two options: choose the second labeled "Custom", and click the associated button next to it labeled "Settings".
7. In the settings context, change the Protocol to LPR. In the LPR settings now available, type in "color" as the "Queue name" and enable the "LPR byte counting". You will now be taken back to the previous screen.
8. Select "Next" to continue.
9. Select "Finish" and you should be set. Print a test page to make sure things are working correctly.
Somewhere in there you may be asked which printer or printer driver to use. If you don't have a driver for an HP2550n color laserjet, then just use the standard HP color laserjet PS printer driver, it should work fine.
Copying a movie DVD
readcd dev=/dev/dvd -v f=movie.img
growisofs -dvd-compat -Z /dev/dvd=movie.img
Using k3b to burn iso images
k3b works great for making data CD's or DVD's. If you already have an iso file already click on tools->burn iso image (dvd or cd). This will just use growisofs for you.
using zip under linux
To zip a directory (folder):
zip -r directoryname directoryname
This will produce directoryname.zip.
To zip a bunch of files
zip /tmp/filename.zip *.mpg *.tex
this will put the indcated files in /tmp/filename.zip
uEye kernel drivers
IDS Imaging the manufacturer.
They provide linux kernel drivers in (mostly) source form but they have trouble working with newer kernels, are not open source and their support is pretty bad. We have made them work for our systems. You will have more or less trouble compiling the module, depending on the kernel version (2.6.12 or older will be easier), your distribution and your kernel options. There is no 64bit support.
Is the kernel driver already installed? Check
/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/media/video/ueye_usb-driver.ko
If you can not find it, compile a new driver: (as root)
$ cd /usr/local/src/ueye/our_sources/ueye-setup
$ /bin/sh ./install.sh
Please notify User:Hans about the new module so he can install it everywhere. Also talk to Hans if the compile fails.
This is the 1.14.09.2 version of the uEye drivers, modified to run under recent (2.6.27) kernels as found on Fedora Linux 10. Our changes can be found in /usr/local/src/ueye/our_sources/ueye-setup/ueye-driver-mpl.diff.
The code we use is this: ueye-1.14.09.2-MPL.tgz.
Please note that you definitely want the 1.14.09.2 drivers (or a later version). They folded in many of my changes to make the ueye work under more modern kernels.
uEye device nodes
The uEye access programs (including kuEye, below) require special device nodes under /dev. Here is the simple script that our workstations run at boot time:
modprobe ueye_usb-driver >/dev/null 2>/dev/null cd /dev rm ./uEye_usb* ./ueye* 2>/dev/null i=0 while [ "$i" -lt 15 ] do dev=uEye_usb$i dev2=ueye$i minor=$(( 80 + $i )) mknod "$dev" c 180 $minor chown root.users "$dev" chmod 664 "$dev" ln -s $dev $dev2 i=$(( i + 1 )) done
This creates the device nodes /dev/uEye_usb0 through /dev/uEye_usb14 and (as symlinks to them) /dev/ueye0 through /dev/ueye14. Different client programs expect different device node names, this makes them all happy. From the kernel point of view, what is important is that they are character devices with major 180 and minors 80 and up.
kuEye graphical interface
Our copy of the source lives in /usr/local/src/kuEye-0.6
First check that it is not already installed: See if /usr/bin/kuEye exists. If not, compile a new version: (as root)
$ cd /usr/local/src/kuEye-0.6 $ make clean $ LDFLAGS="-lGL" CXXFLAGS="-O3 -Wunused -g" ./configure --prefix=/usr $ make $ checkinstall -R --pkgname=kuEye --pkgversion=0.6 --pkgrelease=0.$(date +%Y%m%d) \ --install=yes --docdir=/usr/share/doc --provides=libueye_api.so.1
If checkinstall doesn't work then use make install. Let User:Hans know if checkinstall doesn't work.
checkinstall will ask about "package docs" - answer "y" (yes) to that. It will also ask for a "summary" - give just this line:
kuEye - graphical interface to uEye USB cameras[Enter]
[Enter]
Now kuEye should be installed as a proper RPM package.
Talk to User:Hans if you run into any problems or notice there is a newer version around.
VNC under Linux and Windows
For those who wish to gain full control of remote desktops, complete the following steps.
VNC server
Install and run a VNC server on the machine you wish to control. You can use RealVNC or TightVNC for Win2K or WinXP boxes. For TightVNC on Windows, run the "Lauch TightVNC Server" and a small icon will appear in your process bar. Right click and open it's properties, there are a few changes to make. First, upon install, you are asked to create a connection password. If you want to check the strength of your passwords, go here. Under the "Advanced tab", select the check box to allow loopback connections, and both check boxes to log the connection information. Save your changes and leave the properties.
Linux also offers VNC servers, but they do not allow you to control an existing desktop session. To remotely run graphical programs on another computer, just ssh there and execute the program. It will display locally. For telecommuting purposes, NX is a much better server than VNC. NX clients are available for all platforms.
{optional} Another handy thing to do is to allow echoing (ping) on your WinXP machine. Go to "Control Panel -> Network and Internet Connections -> Network Connections -> Local Area Connection" and open the Properties menu. Go to the "Advanced Tab", then click on "Settings" for the Windows Firewall. Go to the "Advanced" tab again, highlight "Local Area Connection" in the "Network Connections Settings" area and click the "Settings button". Go to the "ICMP" tab and select the check box for "Allow incoming echo request." Click "OK". Now click "Settings" in the "ICMP" area and once again select the check box to "Allow incoming echo request." Now just "OK" your way out of that mess.
VNC client
Now that you have a VNC server running on your remote machine, you need a VNC viewer on your local box. Under windows, install either RealVNC or TightVNC Viewer (Best Compression). In the dialog box that pops up, enter the computer you want to connect to, either the IP address (xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx) or the host name. Under TightVNC you have some options before connecting about scaling the screen size, or which encoding to use.
Under Linux (Fedora), use vncviewer. Easy.
On campus, just VNC to the remote host running the VNC server. From off campus, you have 2 choices: Under WinXX, use the CSM VPN to become part of the Mines network, then VNC to the remote host with your viewer. Under Linux, ssh to Slate, then the host machine, then run your VNC viewer. Under linux, it will look like this (the -X and -Y switches allow X11 forwarding through ssh):
me@home> ssh -Y username@slate.mines.edu
... slate welcome screen
username@slate> ssh -X username@your-workstation-on-campus
... your workstation welcome screen
username@workstation> vncviewer
Talk to User:Bzadler if you run into any problems.
Labview 8.0 libOSMesa.so.4 issue under Linux Fedora Core 5
A quick and easy fix for this problem was found at this forum. The fix is making a symbolic link for the missing file.
To fix the libOSMesa.so.4 problem try running the following as root:
cd /usr/local/natinst/LabVIEW-8.0/linux
ln -s libLVMesaGL.so.3 libOSMesa.so.4
Done.
Matlab is exporting or saving images as black boxes
You (very likely) have an openGL rendering problem! Easy fix, now that I've found it. Inside your figure, choose File -> Export Setup. In the "Properties" box, choose Rendering. Check the box for Custom Renderer, and choose either painters or zbuffer instead of openGL. Now save your image as a .jpg or whatever you wish, and you are good to go.
Re-opening closed Firefox tabs
Closed that important web page you needed and now you can't find it? Don't panic, just press Control+Shift+T to re-open closed tabs (in Windows).
How to install new packages on 64 bit machines
By default, "yum" or "Add/Remove Software" wants to install both 64 and 32 bit versions of any package you install. We do not want or need the 32 bit versions though. If we let it happen, over time 50% of the packages installed on our 64 bit computers would be unnecessary. That is bad for hard disk space and bad because it puts more load on system administration.
If you are using yum, please always say things like yum install program.x86_64 instead of yum install program. The first command explicitly demands the 64 bit version of the program and will only add 64 bit dependencies. The second command will try to install both 64 and 32 bit versions of the program, as well as all 32 bit dependencies.
If you are using the graphical pirut ("Add/Remove Software") program, its package listings make the architecture explicit. If possible, only choose the ".x86_64" packages.
What to do after "yum install" or using "Add/Remove Software"
If you install a software package on your workstation, it should probably also be installed on our other computers, so that all of them are as similar as possible.
To do that, please do the following as root from a terminal:
root@workstation> cd /var/cache/yum
root@workstation> ./copy_over.pl
This will (slowly) print a series of shell commands. Just copy-paste them into your terminal. They will copy the packages you just installed into our global package repository - a shared directory.
The last couple commands will "chdir" you into that package repository, and then show those packages you just copied, along with any older versions of them. It is now your responsibility to delete those old files - but only them. So you need to look at the package file names and timestamps, determine which files are old versions of packages you just installed, and delete those.
Using a basic stamp under linux
for everything other than the tokenizer (which you get from paralax) this is your source Download the bstamp package from Sourceforge.
go to the downloads page at parallax under support
All you need is the latest tokenizer.so library for linux
Make a sym link from your serial device (e.g., /dev/ttyUSB1) to /dev/bstamp. Change permissions accordingly for ordinary users.
Copy the tokenizer to /usr/local/lib and call it thus
cp tokenizer.so /usr/local/lib/libbstamptokenizer.so
then update your libconf
/sbin/ldconfig
The bstamp package has a number of examples and two scripts which get installed in /usr/local/bin. One bstamp_tokenize takes a pbasic file and tokenizes it. The other, bstamp_run sends it to your stamp. Away you go.
Repairing Stanford Research Systems Model SR560 Low-noise preamplifier
If the overload light is constantly on this amplifier, the problem might be one of its ICs. Following are the instructions for replacing the JFET NPD5564.
Remove the bottom cover screws, noting that the large screws are in the front. Orient the preamp so that the lettering on the board faces you; the IC is found in a socket in the lower left area (the lower of two 8-pin ICs in sockets). Remove it using an IC extraction tool and place it away from the new IC as to not confuse them. Carefully place the new IC in the socket. Replace the cover and screws, turn on the preamp to see if your problem is solved.
Starting the Microwave Radar System
Press the POWER button on the three DC power supplies (all buttons located in the lower left corner of each supply).
Press and hold the standby button located on the lower left of the FUNCTION GENERATOR. See that its output is on (light on right side).
In the following order, press OUTPUT on the power supplies: Bottom, Top (both located lower right), Middle (located left).
Check that the voltages and currents are similar to those shown in the figure below.
Switch on the preamplifiers (located lower right).
To shutdown, follow directions in reverse, not checking power supply values.
test section
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