Print-tastic from Linux with VirtualBox

I bought myself a Lexmark X3580 on a whim because I saw it on offer - BIG MISTAKE. It's compatibility with various operating systems is brilliant - brilliant if you use Windows but f#@king rubbish if you dare to use anything else (in truth I don't have a Mac so I don't know if it works on that front). By all reports Lexmark don't even acknowledge the existence of Linux let alone write a driver for it. I only hope that one day this omission comes back to bite their ass. Linux is growing and I don't think it's going to stop growing so they're alienating an ever growing market but that's their choice. Suffice to say I'm not ever going to buy one of their crappy printers.

Anyway, the reason for the post is to highlight my way round the incompatibility - which although far from ideal - allows me to run Linux without needing to switch back to Windows to print. I'm not going to list all the steps but just give a brief outline of the method I used.

Simply put, I run Sun's VirtualBox on a Linux host with a Windows guest. Credit where credit is due, I have nothing but praise for VirtualBox. It keeps on improving month by month and without it I would be consigned to Windows only printing. I just pray they don't start charging for it.

Anyway, I set up VB with USB without USB2 and EHCI - so you'll have to use the non-open version - and installed a Windows XP guest. Regarding the USB2/EHCI thing, I think it's important, someone on 'tinternet said so and since I can print I can't be bothered to investigate whether it's required on not. Then with the Lexy plugged in I set up a USB filter to auto capture it.

Next up was to fire up the virtual XP guest and when the USB Lexmark X3580 scanner/printer was detected I went through to the driver folder on the Lexmark CD and installed the drivers directly - as opposed to running the Lexmark installer program which installs a load of crap software which isn't required for printing. Once the two drivers for scanner and printer were installed (a couple of other drivers will also be installed but they're built in with Windows so no extra drivers are required) you are good to go since you've now got yourself a defined printer.

Finally I shared the printer on the network and Bob's your uncle, you have yourself a network Lexmark that you can print to from other Windows 'puters (once you've installed the drivers and added yourself a network printer of course - my system found the printer network share I'd just set up on the VB guest using the search network option when installing the printer).

The downside - and it is quite a big downside - is that to print from Linux you have to print to PDF and then use the guest to print the PDF file so you'll need to set up a shared directory of some sort - that's either network share or the VirtualBox shared folder - I use the network share way.

The upside is that at least I don't have to reboot back into Windows every time I want to print something. I just wish Lexmark would pull their finger out of their ass as write a Linux driver - I mean, how hard can it be?

Citrix ICA Client for Ubuntu 8.10

Installing the Citrix ICA Client in Ubuntu Intrepid Ibix (8.10) is less than plug and play. That's not to say it's overly hard to install, it's just that you have to download a few extras and can't just select a package from the repository.

Before we start this guide is intended for use with Ubuntu 8.10 and Firefox browser. It may well work with other versions such a kubuntu or xubuntu, other versions and other browsers but primarily it is a guide on how I installed the client software for Ubuntu 8.10.

Right, without further ado about nothing, here's how to install Citrix ICA Client.

First off you need to download the Citrix installer linuxx86.7.17.tgz from
http://www2.slac.stanford.edu/computing/windows/services/citrix/linux_client.htm

Now make a temporary directory in your home directory, mkdir citrix, and change directory into it, cd citrix.

Untar the downloaded file, tar -zxvf linuxx86.7.17.tgz

Then run the installer as root, sudo ./setupwfc and accept all the defaults to install in /usr/lib/ICAClient

Now download the two 'Thawte' certificates from the website listed above. Copy or move the certificates into the ICAClient keystore, cp *.cert /usr/lib/ICAClient/keystore/cacerts

Next you will need the old version of the libXaw library files, version 6 (the ICA Client software will not work with version 7 of libXaw that is installed in Ubuntu 8.10).

Download the deb package from http://packages.debian.org/stable/libs/libxaw6 and install, sudo dpkg install libXaw6...deb

When you attempt to login in to your Citrix client website from within the Firefox browser, it should now be possible to run the ICA client software by selecting to open the file with /usr/lib/ICAClient/wfica.sh (tick the box to remember your choice and always launch with the ICAClient).

And that's it. You should now have a working ICA Client that will run through Firefox.

I guess this is a fairly specific guide using a specific enviroment and assumes some knowledge of the command line. You may be able to modify the steps to work with your particular set up.

Good luck...