Tryst with Linux and other Alternatives

Printing with openSUSE 11 (and HOW-TO install MS fonts) June 26, 2008

For the past four days I’ve been trying to “use” openSUSE 11, and have only just succeeding in taking out a print command.  I must admit that because I do not know my own office network (ie. I’m not a system administrator), there are many things about my network configuration that I end up missing and so I have not been able to adequately configure my openSUSE 11. Of course, I’ve never had to struggle with network issues with PCLinuxOS and even openSUSE 10.2 which was strangely easier to configure, but somehow I know this limitation at the moment is my own and not the distros. openSUSE 11 never claims to be a beginner-friendly distro… just a friendly distro… and so, well, I’m still making friends.

My first major task was to get a print-out. I know that sounds funny but I only just took out my first print job.

Earlier I was trying to use KDE4 for all my work (and I had installed through a single-CD), and not surprisingly most of the CUPS files and SAMBA files were not installed. I went about installing everything, but I still wasn’t able to get access to the office network.

Then I installed KDE 3.5, and I was immediately able to access the network through SAMBA. I wonder why? But still, I explained it as KDE4 teething problems and proceeded to configure printer, which was quite easy in openSUSE 10.2. However here I just couldn’t find an option to “find” printer.

I had to ultimately ask my network supervisor for help and he suggested I directly link to my printers IP address (rather than server address) which was 10.10.10.** but I didn’t know where exactly to type the address using YAST’s printer configuration.

Only after a bit of experimenting I found out that if I put the IP address in the “Global Settings” and that worked! Of course, I realised that the fonts were all way-off because the document I was printing was using Times New Roman.

I realised I needed MS fonts, but I couldn’t find the package in the respositories. So… off to google and the first hit was the one that helped. Ben Kevan’s blog gave a helpful hint about how to instal MS fonts. The following are instructures adapted from there:

i. First install cabextract using KONSOLE

sudo zypper in cabextract

(as it turns out I already had cabextract installed)

ii. Run the following commands in individual lines (pressing enter each time)

wget http://download.opensuse.org/update/10.3/scripts/fetchmsttfonts.sh

chmod a+x fetchmsttfonts.sh

sudo sh fetchmsttfonts.sh

iii. Now wait… my experience was that it tried to find the fastest server but failed to download all the fonts. I just had to do the process again, and it now worked/works.

NOW… my openSUSE 11 is printing, yeah! However, after each printout I’m getting an extra blank page with the message

ERROR: undefined
OFFENDING COMMAND:

STACK:

Well, whatever that means, I’m now at least happy something is happening and look to solve this other problem later.

I also need to figure own my server configuration because I connected to the office server with KDE3.5 without a problem but then now when I try it keeps telling my that the server has been timed out. I’ve stopped my firewall, so that’s not the problem, but that still a problem. I know I should type this all out in a forum… but somehow… sigh….