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Linux CUPS Configuration – Foomatic
Jan 16th
First install all needed packages. Your going to need cups, and the client, and the foomatic and openprinting drivers.
sudo apt-get install cupsys cupsys-client
Then install everything in:
sudo apt-cache search foomatic
If its an HP printer your going to want that library. HP has an auto setup script. Install the package and run:
sudo hp-setup
Installing all the foomatic, openprinting, and hp drivers the hp-setup script will detect printers on the network and will give you options as to which driver to use. To manage everything I recommend webmin. Download webmin from sourceforge, and use dpkg to install it. It will say dependencies are needed so just run:
sudo dpkg --configure -a
Webmin will install and you will access it from:
https://localhost:10000
You can configure other printers (other than HP) from here. You should set the printer to static ip address then you will configure the printer to that IP and port 9100. Select the corresponding from from the CUPS menu at the bottom of the printer configuration page. Some printers need a driver straight from openprinting.com. Copy the ppd to a folder in /var/share/ppd/openprinting. Create a folder with the manufacturers name if need be. Install it the same way as other printers (through webmin), and select the corresponding ppd drivers, in the CUPS section, the add new printer configuration page.
Open Solaris in VirtualBox – Comparision and Usefulness
Sep 14th
Open Solaris is only available in a 32bit flavor, and is well supported by Sun’s VirtualBox. When your host OS is 64bit you cannot use flash in your web browser without using nspluginwrapper, or installing a 32bit compatibility layer. Rather than having a tremendous amount of unnecessary code on your system, simply to run flash in a web browser, I prefer using a 32bit OS in a VirtualBox guest environment. Open Solaris supports seamless mode and from a graphical perspective is indistinguishable from a standard Debian based Gnome desktop. On the backend Open Solaris is very different. Utilizing a UNIX kernel, and a custom Sun package management system there are a variety of nuances that make Open Solaris different. Aptitude, and the shorthand apt-get command is only available in Debian land, and yum is only available in Red Hat land. Open Solaris utilizes pkgadd. The following is a tabled list comparing the two package management systems: http://opensolaris.org/os/community/documentation/apt_ips/ After getting the hang of Open Solaris a bit, it becomes functional just like Linux. Its stable like Linux, with the main advantage that it is supported by Sun Corporation. It is probably extremely debatable whether to use a UNIX based OS or Linux. From a LAMP server environment I see little difference in functionality.
Instant iPhone VPN
Mar 2nd
I highly recommend JanusVM for your iPhone VPN solution. Janus incorporates squid, tor, and privoxy providing much more than just a VPN. Squid is a proxy server, which will speed up your connection slightly. Tor is a network of servers around the world that will scramble your network traffic so its practically impossible to track who or where you are. And privoxy will strip all sensitive data from your website browsing to further improve your wireless security. Obviously the VPN part of Janus will allow your iPhone to have a secure connection to the internet, so you can access wifi anywhere without fear of anything!!! The best part is JanusVM is that it’s completely free. I highly recommend donating a little money if you have it. The author of the software is providing a great service to the open source community, and now allows iPhone users to have a secure, reliable, and instant VPN solution! http://janusvm.peertech.org/ Just pop JanusVM into a VirtualBox machine, and setup host networking to grab an external ip address. Configure your iphone to access your external ip address, the associated pptp port (port 1723), and viola your VPN should be up and running in about 15 minutes worth of configuration 
In the future I will post a graphical tutorial on this, but for now try searching this blog, in the upper right hand corner, for more information about setting up virtual machines and configuring host networking.
