Hanne's blog

I gave up my package building project. It is easy to build a package but not a modified package that does what I wanted, which is including some preset preferences. And it is really not I who promised to do it, but the owner of the Mac. So I guess I'd better give it back soon *G* Eee playtime to come, anyway. I learned something about the package structure, though.

Projector
One reason I wanted to play with Mac was that we always have trouble getting the projector to work on a Mac, especially our new projector. Only the day my student aid borrowed a Mac from one of our researchers to test, everything worked fine. The magic sysadm touch strikes again.

So I picked of the little trouble projector (which BTW is called Alice, since someone told me the old one was called Bob), and plugged it in via DVI. It worked like a dream. So I changed the resolution and it still worked.

Then I changed to the VGA cable with a VGA to DVI adapter. Bugger. It still worked. How the *** can I debug on something that works whenever I do it?

Anyway I learned where to find the display settings on a Mac, which was easy as soon as you figure out the Mac anyway: System Preferences (which is in the toolbar), then Display.

Next time we have a Mac that refuses to work with the new projector I shall video it on my phone to prove that it happened...

Internet Printing Protocol
So I turned to printers. I got the Mac to print happily directly to my printers, without passing through my print server, by just letting the "Add printer" dialog sit in the default tab long enough for all my network printers to let themselves be known.

I wish to disable this direct printing, tough, in spite of us being relatively few users so abuse it easy to spot. Running everything through the print server makes it easier to make print statistics and control my traffic and in the end someone might want to know why we are spending so much money on toner - who is printing how much.

So I want the CUPS print server printers to announce themselves to Mac and Windows users for easy installation. However, today I just wanted to get Mac to work with ipp.

Go to the "IP" tab, set the protocol to be IPP and enter (in my case):

Address: printserver/printers
Queue: lp
Name: lp at printserver
Location; Whatever
Print Using: Brother HL-5270DN series CUPS

What mystified me a bit here was:
In a browser I can go to http://printserver:631/printers and find the printer I want. (No it doesn't work from outside, you don't have to bother to try.) In Windows I can use that URL in the print dialog to connect to the printer. On Mac, that just doesn't work.

So I noticed that choosing the Internet Printing Protocol, the URL ends up with a ipp:// in front.

The Ipp URL RFC says that that the ipp:// URL can take a port number but uses 631 by default. So both printserver:631/printers and printserver/printers should work. And it did!

What fooled me for a while was that the printing dialog claimed that it was an invalid address. Also, the print status dialog claimed to be contacting my print server on port 9100... But since it worked, and I can see the print having passed through my print server, that is probably en error in the status message and not in the actual protocol implementation.

Oh am I glad that I shall not be a Mac user for much longer.

I'll give it one credit compared to the Eee, however: I can see when Caps Lock is active on the Mac. It has a large, friendly green light right on the actual Caps Lock key. On the Eee one should just learn not to hit it accidentally because there is no light indicator whatsoever.