We have a Buffalo Linkstation Live NAS, model HS-DH500GL hanging off our home network serving personal files. The unit includes a print server. You hook up a USB printer, and it works. And for most of the first year, it was flawless.

Then, at some point in 2008, it stopped printing. Or, rather, it stopped printing from Windows. In the case of this particular printer, it’s shared on one local network here consisting predominately of Windows and Linux computers; the odd thing is that we could still print from any random Linux box we’d attach to the LAN. No PC running Windows would work any longer.

And after probably two months of printing from Windows not working, it suddenly spit out some old stuck docs (roughly two months old or so–I know, right?) and started working again. And it worked again normally for many, many months.

Until a few months ago, when it stopped again. And this time, it’s shown no signs of coming back to life.

And once again, we can still happily print via Linux all day long, like there’s no problem at all. File server functionality (across all OSes that access it) is still totally fine as well.

Digging around, it seems it’s a pretty common problem. These devices (and not just our 500G model, it seems) apparently don’t handle Windows printing very well and, over time, eventually fall over, seemingly dead (from a Windows printing point of view). Documents seem to stick in a print queue somewhere. In our case, on any Windows machine we looked at, the Windows print queue always seemed to show as pending the last print job from whatever Linux box–a print job that we know has printed and been held in our hands.

So those stuck documents…are they really stuck? Attempts to empty spooler folders, restart print services on Windows, monkey with bidirectional-communications settings, etc… nothing worked. XP, Vista, made no difference. We have not tested this with Windows 7, but we assume the problem exists there as well, as it appears it’s a Buffalo/Linkstation problem, and not an issue with Windows itself.

The only apparent solution is to completely wipe everything from the Linkstation device (not just configuration info, but all of your data), monkey with setting the NAS software into a debug mode, and force-updating/overwriting the firmware to “reset” it completely. This resets everything. User data, user configurations, everything. We weren’t about to blow away the data or deal with moving it around if we didn’t have to. If that solution works for you, go for it. Sadly, even this extreme solution does not work for everyone.

We went a different route. Our workaround? Installing Print Services for Unix, under Windows. It’s dead-easy, assuming you have access privileges on your Windows machine, and here’s a Microsoft Knowledge Base (KB) article that tells you how:

Print Services for UNIX: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/324078

You’ll need to install this on each Windows machine that won’t print (likely all of them once this bug rears its head); it can be automated in the normal ways if you have a larger installed base of affected computers.

The normal way Windows users are told to connect to their Linkstation’s print server is via Network Neighborhood. You navigate to your Linkstation device, see the print server, right-click, and choose “Connect…”. That sets up a printer connection. You choose the driver or provide one, and you’re off to the races. If you don’t go that route, you can always add a printer via the Printers control panel and end up with the same result. Only, once it stops printing, good luck printing consistently that way ever again.

Follow the KB article instructions to get Print Services for Unix installed, then configure an LPR port as described, giving either LAN IP or name for your Linkstation, pointing drivers at it, and start printing again.

It doesn’t solve the problem of Windows printing directly, but it does pretty easily solve the more general–and ultimately more useful–”I just wanna print from Windows, but can’t” problem. Hopefully it works for you, too. We wanted to let this run for a few weeks or so without issue before writing it up; so far, so good.

And Buffalo, we shouldn’t have to say it…. but you might want to finally fix this long-standing bug in a way that doesn’t require people to pay for twice the archive/backup hardware they really need (buying another backup/archive solution as temporary or replacement storage altogether).

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We’ve done several upgrade installs of 8.10 so far, and for the most part it’s been smooth. There are a couple of issues we’ve come across so far after upgrades.

The first has to do with a constantly-blinking, and seriously-distracting, wifi light. Launchpad bug report is here:

Intrepid: WLAN LED blinks incessantly on iwl3945 | iwl4965 laptop
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/250211

UPDATE: You may have some luck with this fix (attempt at your own risk; results may vary…):

http://blog.drinsama.de/erich/en/linux/2008052101-iwlwifi-blinking.html

The next thing we just noticed over the last day or two, and that’s the apparently total loss of keyboard input inside a Windows XP VM via VirtualBox OSE. A couple of times, keyboard control eventually came back seemingly on its own after about twenty minutes.  Another time we were completely stuck for well over an hour and eventually gave up, killing VirtualBox. The keyboard isn’t totally dead; it’s just dead as far as the VM is concerned. You can still three-finger your way back into another shell and regain control of the machine. Mouse (and everything else) still works just fine in the VM, too; no other indications of any other problems. Seems like it might be related to the VBox Additions, but we’ve not yet looked into it very closely at all. We haven’t looked for any bug reports on this one yet.

And last but not least, if you run some sort of Active Directory-related setup, don’t have any local users, do channel bonding and maybe have a complicated RAID setup… you might want to consider not upgrading just yet, or at least bother browsing the release notes before you leap into upgrading. We read about this one; it didn’t happen to us!

You can download 8.10 here: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu

Full release notes for 8.10 are here: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/810

All in all, 8.10 Intrepid Ibex seems to be a decent upgrade. It feels like mostly-minor tweaks and speed enhancements, and more driver support. Many included apps are updated. There is extensive use of the ‘>’ symbol in the menus, and that carat usage–in every orientation–carries over across much of the UI; almost annoyingly so in fact. NVIDIA drivers obsolete some older NVIDIA cards (like the GeForce4s), so you may need to go back to the open-source drivers and deal with being 2D-only for now. Check the release notes for most of the details.

System performance does seem noticeably better on all systems we’ve upgraded so far. WiFi signals where applicable seem stronger; all our setups are seeing more access points now than they did prior to the upgrade.

We have not yet done a squeaky-clean install of 8.10, nor have we tested a current LiveCD… but will soon.

Now if we could just get those blinking wifi lights to stop. b.. l.. i.. n.. k.. i.. n.. g.. .. .. .. .. It’s really, really distracting.

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It is free software, and there are several ways to get it. Ubuntu is also available in a variety of flavors, from the educational Edubuntu version, to the KDE-enabled Kubuntu version, to Xubuntu for those that like a sparser looking/feeling desktop interface, to their very popular Ubuntu Server Edition (which is really great for LAMP installs, among other things).

The normal image download of Ubuntu is also a LiveCD, which allows you to boot off of the CD and give Ubuntu a try, without worrying about damaging or altering your existing OS/setup. It does run a bit slower in this mode, since it’s not actually installed but instead running directly off the CD in RAM only, but it should otherwise be a working version of Ubuntu you can kick the tires on and try out before you commit to it. Pretty powerful stuff.

You can also download an “alternate desktop CD” version; it does not include the Live CD functionality, instead it uses a text-based installer, and is a slightly smaller download. I recommend you skip this version, unless you know you specifically need it.

Who should try Ubuntu? Well, the LiveCD will allow anyone to simply pop in a disc and try it out, so I think everyone should, at least once. You’ve got nothing to lose but a some time downloading and burning it to CD, and again, it’s totally free.

And yes, it’s probably a bit different from what you may be used to, but it’s really the same in most of the ways that matter to a typical PC user. Will Windows users love it? That depends on how stuck you are on the familiarity of Windows. Most of the things the average person does with Windows can be easily accomplished for free using a Linux distro like Ubuntu, which already includes–out of the ‘box’–Firefox, OpenOffice.org’s office suite, and tons of other useful “everyday” software most people want and need. We use it here, daily–both the Desktop and Server editions–and love it.

If you have questions or want to get even more into it, feel free to contact us to set up a demo, give a presentation, or arrange some training. Ubuntu offers both free and paid support and paid training as well.

Ubuntu 7.10 “Gutsy Gibbon” can be downloaded here, or from a large number of download mirror sites. Enjoy!

(Image from Ubuntu.com)

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