Automatic Backup With Rsync And Cron On Ubuntu

Keeping a directory automatically backed up somewhere is always useful. Every few months this is needed on one machine or another. Here are the steps:

1. First set up ssh keys so passwords are no longer needed.
1. Test things by verifying a ‘ssh user@yourserver.com’ does require a password.
2. Make some ssh keys on your client and then move the public key to the server
1. cd ~/.ssh
2. ls
3. ssh-keygen -t dsa (Keep the defaults by just pressing enter a few times.)
4. cp id_dsa.pub $USER”-id_dsa.pub”
5. scp $USER”-id_dsa.pub” user@yoursever.com:.ssh/
6. echo $USER (and remember name X so it can be used on other machine)
3. Now set things right on the server
1. ssh user@yourserver.com
2. cd ~/.ssh
3. cat X-id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys
4. rm X-id_dsa.pub
5. exit
4. Test things by verifying a ‘ssh user@yourserver.com’ no longer requires a password.
2. Determine the directory to be backed up and where it will be backed up and test the command to be used.
1. time rsync -atvz ~/local-directory-of-your-choosing/ user@youserver.com:remote-directory-of-your-choosing/
2. log in the server and verify the files are there…
3. Put the command in cron. Because cron is broken in ubuntu you can’t simply do “crontab -e” anylonger. (How can something so basic be broken?!) Instead follow these instructions:
1. vi ~/some_file and put in the cron commands
2. @hourly rsync -atvz ~/local-directory-of-your-choosing/ user@youserver.com:remote-directory-of-your-choosing/
3. crontab ~/some_file
4. crontab -l

Now simply test it out…

Ubuntu Hangs On Reboot!

I installed a fresh copy of Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 on a laptop this morning. Unfortunately it hangs on shut-down showing no indication it has hung. The screen is almost completely black execpt for a slowly blinking underscore at the top left of the screen. When ctl-alt-del is struck then the message “md: stopping all md devices” is displayed and the machine continues to reboot normally. Unfortunately a keyboard must be attached to this laptop before the ctl-alt-del can be entered. Granted reboots are not normal. A google search on this problem shows no solutions though many people have encountered the problem. It’s just another example of how poorly the Ubuntu releases are tested. It’s sort of an anything goes that is cool atmosphere with very little testing. Or a “just barely good enough to continue” paradigm. At this point I’m seriously thinking of switching to another distribution. One that hopefully undergoes stringent testing. However I’m afraid it will not support all the hardware like Ubuntu does. Life consists of many trade-offs.

On a related issue Ubuntu needs to reconfigure their boot charts to include how long it took to complete the entire reboot cycle. If it takes two minutes to shut down, another minute to make it through the grub stuff, and only 20 seconds to boot the entire process should say 3:20 instead of just :20 as it now does.

How To Install Jslint on Ubuntu

At my entry http://ioconnor.wordpress.com/2009/04/24/javascript-testing/ you’ll notice there are two entirely different lint programs out there for JavaScript. I installed and made an entry on how to install JavaScript Lint here. This posting describes how to install the other version of lint, jslint, under ubuntu. I even tested it under Ubuntu 8.04 and 9.04. Follow these steps:

1. sudo mkdir -p /my/bin
   I prefer not to much around in the home directory but to create all custom stuff right off the root so I know what is mine. You can choose some other directory if you’d like.
2. cd /my/bin
3. sudo wget http://www.jslint.com/rhino/jslint.js
   If they ever remove this send me a mssage and I’ll post it.
4. sudo chmod a+x jslint.js
   Not sure if this is needed but it’s habit…
5. sudo apt-get install rhino
   I did not have rhino installed on 9.04 but it does not hurt to verify with this command.
6. time rhino jslint.js jslint.js
   jslint is written in javascript. So run it on itself to see if there are any errors or warnings.

That’s pretty simple. Too bad their website does not make it simple. In fact their website does not contain enough information. I had to google about for a while to figure it all out. Anyways here is the output when ran on itself. Then further down I use the other lint program on it.

JSLint does allow options. I am going to at some point see if I can make an include file that will specify just the options I want.

JSLint also has a good section on coding standards. I like it.

time rhino /my/bin/jslint.js /my/bin/jslint.js
Lint at line 4 character 236: eval is evil.
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Lint at line 4 character 6051: eval is evil.
“use strict”;JSLINT=(function(){var adsafe_id,adsafe_may,adsafe_went,anonname,approved,atrule={‘import’:true,media:true,’font-face’:true,page:true},banned={apply:true,’arguments’:true,call:true,callee:true,caller:true,constructor:true,’eval’:true,prototype:true,unwatch:true,valueOf:true,watch:true},boolOptions={adsafe:true,bitwise:true,browser:true,cap:true,css:true,debug:true,eqeqeq:true,evil:true,forin:true,fragment:true,immed:true,laxbreak:true,newcap:true,nomen:true,on:true,onevar:true,passfail:true,plusplus:true,regexp:true,rhino:true,undef:true,safe:true,sidebar:true,strict:true,sub:true,white:true,widget:true},browser={alert:true,blur:true,clearInterval:true,clearTimeout:true,close:true,closed:true,confirm:true,console:true,Debug:true,defaultStatus:true,document:true,event:true,focus:true,frames:true,getComputedStyle:true,history:true,Image:true,length:true,location:true,moveBy:true,moveTo:true,name:true,navigator:true,onblur:true,onerror:true,onfocus:true,onload:true,onresize:true,onunload:true,open:true,opener:true,opera:true,Option:true,parent:true,print:true,prompt:true,resizeBy:true,resizeTo:true,screen:true,scroll:true,scrollBy:true,scrollTo:true,setInterval:true,setTimeout:true,status:true,top:true,XMLHttpRequest:true},cssAttributeData,cssAny,cssColorData={“aliceblue”:true,”antiquewhite”:true,”aqua”:true,”aquamarine”:true,”azure”:true,”beige”:true,”bisque”:true,”black”:true,”blanchedalmond”:true,”blue”:true,”blueviolet”:true,”brown”:true,”burlywood”:true,”cadetblue”:true,”chartreuse”:true,”chocolate”:true,”coral”:true,”cornflowerblue”:true,”cornsilk”:true,”crimson”:true,”cyan”:true,”darkblue”:true,”darkcyan”:true,”darkgoldenrod”:true,”darkgray”:true,”darkgreen”:true,”darkkhaki”:true,”darkmagenta”:true,”darkolivegreen”:true,”darkorange”:true,”darkorchid”:true,”darkred”:true,”darksalmon”:true,”darkseagreen”:true,”darkslateblue”:true,”darkslategray”:true,”darkturquoise”:true,”darkviolet”:true,”deeppink”:true,”deepskyblue”:true,”dimgray”:true,”dodgerblue”:true,”firebrick”:true,”floralwhite”:true,”forestgreen”:true,”fuchsia”:true,”gainsboro”:true,”ghostwhite”:true,”gold”:true,”goldenrod”:true,”gray”:true,”green”:true,”greenyellow”:true,”honeydew”:true,”hotpink”:true,”indianred”:true,”indigo”:true,”ivory”:true,”khaki”:true,”lavender”:true,”lavenderblush”:true,”lawngreen”:true,”lemonchiffon”:true,”lightblue”:true,”lightcoral”:true,”lightcyan”:true,”lightgoldenrodyellow”:true,”lightgreen”:true,”lightpink”:true,”lightsalmon”:true,”lightseagreen”:true,”lightskyblue”:true,”lightslategray”:true,”lightsteelblue”:true,”lightyellow”:true,”lime”:true,”limegreen”:true,”linen”:true,”magenta”:true,”maroon”:true,”mediumaquamarine”:true,”mediumblue”:true,”mediumorchid”:true,”mediumpurple”:true,”mediumseagreen”:true,”mediumslateblue”:true,”mediumspringgreen”:true,”mediumturquoise”:true,”mediumvioletred”:true,”midnightblue”:true,”mintcream”:true,”mistyrose”:true,”moccasin”:true,”navajowhite”:true,”navy”:true,”oldlace”:true,”olive”:true,”olivedrab”:true,”orange”:true,”orangered”:true,”orchid”:true,”palegoldenrod”:true,”palegreen”:true,”paleturquoise”:true,”palevioletred”:true,”papayawhip”:true,”peachpuff”:true,”peru”:true,”pink”:true,”plum”:true,”powderblue”:true,”purple”:true,”red”:true,”rosybrown”:true,”royalblue”:true,”saddlebrown”:true,”salmon”:true,”sandybrown”:true,”seagreen”:true,”seashell”:true,”sienna”:true,”silver”:true,”skyblue”:true,”slateblue”:true,”slategray”:true,”snow”:true,”springgreen”:true,”steelblue”:true,”tan”:true,”teal”:true,”thistle”:true,”tomato”:true,”turquoise”:true,”violet”:true,”wheat”:true,”white”:true,”whitesmoke”:true,”yellow”:true,”yellowgreen”:true},cssBorderStyle,cssLengthData={‘%’:true,’cm’:true,’em’:true,’ex’:true,’in’:true,’mm’:true,’pc’:true,’pt’:true,’px’:true},escapes={‘\b’:'\\b’,'\t’:'\\t’,'\n’:'\\n’,'\f’:'\\f’,'\r’:'\\r’,'”‘:’\\”‘,’/':’\\/’,'\\’:'\\\\’},funct,functions,global,htmltag={a:{},abbr:{},acronym:{},address:{},applet:{},area:{empty:true,parent:’ map ‘},b:{},base:{empty:true,parent:’ head ‘},bdo:{},big:{},blockquote:{},body:{parent:’ html noframes ‘},br:{empty:true},button:{},canvas:{parent:’ body p div th td ‘},caption:{parent:’ table ‘},center:{},cite:{},code:{},col:{empty:true,parent:’ table colgroup ‘},colgroup:{parent:’ table ‘},dd:{parent:’ dl ‘},del:{},dfn:{},dir:{},div:{},dl:{},dt:{parent:’ dl ‘},em:{},embed:{},fieldset:{},font:{},form:{},frame:{empty:true,parent:’ frameset ‘},frameset:{parent:’ html frameset ‘},h1:{},h2:{},h3:{},h4:{},h5:{},h6:{},head:{parent:’ html ‘},html:{parent:’*'},hr:{empty:true},i:{},iframe:{},img:{empty:true},input:{empty:true},ins:{},kbd:{},label:{},legend:{parent:’ fieldset ‘},li:{parent:’ dir menu ol ul ‘},link:{empty:true,parent:’ head ‘},map:{},menu:{},meta:{empty:true,parent:’ head noframes noscript ‘},noframes:{parent:’ html body ‘},noscript:{parent:’ body head noframes ‘},object:{},ol:{},optgroup:{parent:’ select ‘},option:{parent:’ optgroup select ‘},p:{},param:{empty:true,parent:’ applet object ‘},pre:{},q:{},samp:{},script:{empty:true,parent:’ body div frame head iframe p pre span ‘},select:{},small:{},span:{},strong:{},style:{parent:’ head ‘,empty:true},sub:{},sup:{},table:{},tbody:{parent:’ table ‘},td:{parent:’ tr ‘},textarea:{},tfoot:{parent:’ table ‘},th:{parent:’ tr ‘},thead:{parent:’ table ‘},title:{parent:’ head ‘},tr:{parent:’ table tbody thead tfoot ‘},tt:{},u:{},ul:{},’var’:{}},ids,implied,inblock,indent,jsonmode,lines,lookahead,member,membersOnly,nexttoken,noreach,option,predefined,prereg,prevtoken,pseudorule={‘first-child’:true,link:true,visited:true,hover:true,active:true,focus:true,lang:true,’first-letter’:true,’first-line’:true,before:true,after:true},rhino={defineClass:true,deserialize:true,gc:true,help:true,load:true,loadClass:true,print:true,quit:true,readFile:true,readUrl:true,runCommand:true,seal:true,serialize:true,spawn:true,sync:true,toint32:true,version:true},scope,sidebar={System:true},src,stack,standard={Array:true,Boolean:true,Date:true,decodeURI:true,decodeURIComponent:true,encodeURI:true,encodeURIComponent:true,Error:true,’eval’:true,EvalError:true,Function:true,isFinite:true,isNaN:true,JSON:true,Math:true,Number:true,Object:true,parseInt:true,parseFloat:true,RangeError:true,ReferenceError:true,RegExp:true,String:true,SyntaxError:true,TypeError:true,URIError:true},standard_member={E:true,LN2:true,LN10:true,LOG2E:true,LOG10E:true,PI:true,SQRT1_2:true,SQRT2:true,MAX_VALUE:true,MIN_VALUE:true,NEGATIVE_INFINITY:true,POSITIVE_INFINITY:true},syntax={},tab,token,urls,warnings,widget={alert:true,animator:true,appleScript:true,beep:true,bytesToUIString:true,Canvas:true,chooseColor:true,chooseFile:true,chooseFolder:true,closeWidget:true,COM:true,convertPathToHFS:true,convertPathToPlatform:true,CustomAnimation:true,escape:true,FadeAnimation:true,filesystem:true,Flash:true,focusWidget:true,form:true,FormField:true,Frame:true,HotKey:true,Image:true,include:true,isApplicationRunning:true,iTunes:true,konfabulatorVersion:true,log:true,md5:true,MenuItem:true,MoveAnimation:true,openURL:true,play:true,Point:true,popupMenu:true,preferenceGroups:true,preferences:true,print:true,prompt:true,random:true,Rectangle:true,reloadWidget:true,ResizeAnimation:true,resolvePath:true,resumeUpdates:true,RotateAnimation:true,runCommand:true,runCommandInBg:true,saveAs:true,savePreferences:true,screen:true,ScrollBar:true,showWidgetPreferences:true,sleep:true,speak:true,Style:true,suppressUpdates:true,system:true,tellWidget:true,Text:true,TextArea:true,Timer:true,unescape:true,updateNow:true,URL:true,Web:true,widget:true,Window:true,XMLDOM:true,XMLHttpRequest:true,yahooCheckLogin:true,yahooLogin:true,yahooLogout:true},xmode,xquote,ax=/@cc|<\/?|script|\]*s\]|<\s*!|&lt/i,cx=/[\u0000-\u001f\u007f-\u009f\u00ad\u0600-\u0604\u070f\u17b4\u17b5\u200c-\u200f\u2028-\u202f\u2060-\u206f\ufeff\ufff0-\uffff]/,tx=/^\s*([(){}\[.,:;'"~\?\]#@]|==?=?|\/(\*(global|extern|jslint|member|members)?|=|\/)?|\*[\/=]?|\+[+=]?|-[\-=]?|%=?|&[&=]?|\|[|=]?|>>?>?=?|<([\/=!]|\!(\[|--)?|<=?)?|\^=?|\!=?=?|[a-zA-Z_$][a-zA-Z0-9_$]*|[0-9]+([xX][0-9a-fA-F]+|\.[0-9]*)?([eE][+\-]?[0-9]+)?)/,hx=/^\s*(['"=>\/&#]|<(?:\/|\!(?:–)?)?|[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9_\-]*|[0-9]+|–|.)/,nx=/[\u0000-\u001f&<"\/\\\u007f-\u009f\u00ad\u0600-\u0604\u070f\u17b4\u17b5\u200c-\u200f\u2028-\u202f\u2060-\u206f\ufeff\ufff0-\uffff]/,nxg=/[\u0000-\u001f&<"\/\\\u007f-\u009f\u00ad\u0600-\u0604\u070f\u17b4\u17b5\u200c-\u200f\u2028-\u202f\u2060-\u206f\ufeff\ufff0-\uffff]/g,ox=/[>&]|<[\/!]?|–/,lx=/\*\/|\/\*/,ix=/^([a-zA-Z_$][a-zA-Z0-9_$]*)$/,jx=/^(?:javascript|jscript|ecmascript|vbscript|mocha|livescript)\s*:/i,ux=/&|\+|\u00AD|\.\.|\/\*|%[^;]|base64|url|expression|data|mailto/i,sx=/^\s*([{:#*%.=,>+\[\]@()”‘;*]|[a-zA-Z0-9_][a-zA-Z0-9_\-]*|<\/|\/\*)/,ssx=/^\s*([@#!"'};:\-%.=,+\[\]()*_]|[a-zA-Z][a-zA-Z0-9._\-]*|\/\*?|\d+(?:\.\d+)?|<\/)/,qx=/[^a-zA-Z0-9-_\/ ]/,dx=/[\[\]\/\\”‘*<>.&:(){}+=#]/,rx={outer:hx,html:hx,style:sx,styleproperty:ssx};function F(){}

Lint at line 119 character 36: eval is evil.
if(!option.evil&&nexttoken.value===’eval’){warning(“eval is evil.”,nexttoken);}}

Lint at line 350 character 604: eval is evil.
return this;},led:function(){error(“Expected an operator and instead saw ‘{a}’.”,nexttoken,nexttoken.value);}};type(‘(regexp)’,function(){return this;});delim(‘(endline)’);delim(‘(begin)’);delim(‘(end)’).reach=true;delim(‘</’).reach=true;delim(‘<!’);delim(‘<!–’);delim(‘–>’);delim(‘(error)’).reach=true;delim(‘}’).reach=true;delim(‘)’);delim(‘]’);delim(‘”‘).reach=true;delim(“‘”).reach=true;delim(‘;’);delim(‘:’).reach=true;delim(‘,’);delim(‘#’);delim(‘@’);reserve(‘else’);reserve(‘case’).reach=true;reserve(‘catch’);reserve(‘default’).reach=true;reserve(‘finally’);reservevar(‘arguments’);reservevar(‘eval’);reservevar(‘false’);reservevar(‘Infinity’);reservevar(‘NaN’);reservevar(‘null’);reservevar(‘this’);reservevar(‘true’);reservevar(‘undefined’);assignop(‘=’,'assign’,20);assignop(‘+=’,'assignadd’,20);assignop(‘-=’,'assignsub’,20);assignop(‘*=’,'assignmult’,20);assignop(‘/=’,'assigndiv’,20).nud=function(){error(“A regular expression literal can be confused with ‘/=’.”);};assignop(‘%=’,'assignmod’,20);bitwiseassignop(‘&=’,'assignbitand’,20);bitwiseassignop(‘|=’,'assignbitor’,20);bitwiseassignop(‘^=’,'assignbitxor’,20);bitwiseassignop(‘<<=’,'assignshiftleft’,20);bitwiseassignop(‘>>=’,'assignshiftright’,20);bitwiseassignop(‘>>>=’,'assignshiftrightunsigned’,20);infix(‘?’,function(left,that){that.left=left;that.right=parse(10);advance(‘:’);that['else']=parse(10);return that;},30);infix(‘||’,'or’,40);infix(‘&&’,'and’,50);bitwise(‘|’,'bitor’,70);bitwise(‘^’,'bitxor’,80);bitwise(‘&’,'bitand’,90);relation(‘==’,function(left,right){if(option.eqeqeq){warning(“Expected ‘{a}’ and instead saw ‘{b}’.”,this,’===’,'==’);}else if(isPoorRelation(left)){warning(“Use ‘{a}’ to compare with ‘{b}’.”,this,’===’,left.value);}else if(isPoorRelation(right)){warning(“Use ‘{a}’ to compare with ‘{b}’.”,this,’===’,right.value);}

Lint at line 373 character 34: eval is evil.
if(!option.evil){if(left.value===’eval’||left.value===’Function’||left.value===’execScript’){warning(“eval is evil.”,left);}else if(p[0]&&p[0].id===’(string)’&&(left.value===’setTimeout’||left.value===’setInterval’)){warning(“Implied eval is evil. Pass a function instead of a string.”,left);}}

Lint at line 445 character 248: eval is evil.
if(o.safe){o.browser=false;o.css=false;o.debug=false;o.eqeqeq=true;o.evil=false;o.forin=false;o.nomen=true;o.on=false;o.rhino=false;o.safe=true;o.sidebar=false;o.strict=true;o.sub=false;o.undef=true;o.widget=false;predefined.Date=false;predefined['eval']=false;predefined.Function=false;predefined.Object=false;predefined.ADSAFE=true;predefined.lib=true;}

real    1m52.358s
user    1m52.047s
sys    0m0.232s

Ok, looks like their code is ok if the childish “eval is evil” warnings are ignored. However what does JavaScript Lint say. Turns out it’s much more interesting:

time jsl -conf /my/bin/jsl.conf -process jslint.js
JavaScript Lint 0.3.0 (JavaScript-C 1.5 2004-09-24)
Developed by Matthias Miller (http://www.JavaScriptLint.com)

jslint.js
/my/bin/jslint.js(32): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(32): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement
/my/bin/jslint.js(33): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(42): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(43): warning: function string does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(53): lint warning: regular expressions should be preceded by a left parenthesis, assignment, colon, or comma
/my/bin/jslint.js(59): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(61): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(62): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(67): lint warning: use of label
/my/bin/jslint.js(71): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(72): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(72): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement
/my/bin/jslint.js(81): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(81): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement
/my/bin/jslint.js(82): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(83): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(86): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(87): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(90): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(90): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(97): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(97): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement
/my/bin/jslint.js(114): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement
/my/bin/jslint.js(160): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(166): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(172): warning: function identifier does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(184): warning: function statement does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(185): lint warning: regular expressions should be preceded by a left parenthesis, assignment, colon, or comma
/my/bin/jslint.js(193): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(193): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement
/my/bin/jslint.js(222): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement
/my/bin/jslint.js(222): warning: function cssWidth does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(229): warning: function cssCommaList does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(230): lint warning: empty statement or extra semicolon
/my/bin/jslint.js(247): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(248): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(255): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement
/my/bin/jslint.js(261): warning: function styleValue does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(280): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(282): warning: function stylePattern does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(289): lint warning: regular expressions should be preceded by a left parenthesis, assignment, colon, or comma
/my/bin/jslint.js(289): lint warning: regular expressions should be preceded by a left parenthesis, assignment, colon, or comma
/my/bin/jslint.js(293): lint warning: regular expressions should be preceded by a left parenthesis, assignment, colon, or comma
/my/bin/jslint.js(306): lint warning: duplicate case in switch statements
/my/bin/jslint.js(306): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(309): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement
/my/bin/jslint.js(343): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(347): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement
/my/bin/jslint.js(349): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(349): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement
/my/bin/jslint.js(349): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(356): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(399): warning: function functionparams does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(399): warning: function functionparams does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(411): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(412): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(414): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(414): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(415): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(424): warning: anonymous function does not always return a value
/my/bin/jslint.js(442): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(452): lint warning: missing break statement for last case in switch
/my/bin/jslint.js(466): lint warning: missing default case in switch statement

0 error(s), 64 warning(s)
real 0m0.083s
user 0m0.068s
sys 0m0.008s

So, kind of neat how jslint.js is a JavaScript file but it appears to be weak, wimpy, and worthless. Meaning it doesn’t catch nearly as many possible problems and it took over 1652 times longer than JavaScript Lint.

However. The website version of jslint is much better. It’s faster and allows various options than it’s CLI version. Still it reported what seemed like spurious errors and miscellaneous information that was just plain confusing if even correct. (It was probably correct but I just didn’t have the desire to figure out what it was going on about.) The options are fun to play with but who wants to cut and paste to a website?

JavaScript Code Coverage On Ubuntu

I’ve been playing with JavaScript looking for QA tools, getting JavaScript Lint in vim on Ubuntu, etc.. Now I’ve got code coverage analysis going for it. Follow these instructions to install JavaScript Code Coverage on Ubuntu:

1. Download from and unpack.
2. Change directory to where it was unpacked:
   
   cd jscoverage-0.4/
3. Configure the environment for Ubuntu:
   
   ./configure
4. Compile the program:
   
   make
5. Copy jscoverage-server to your personal bin:
   
   cp jscoverage-server /my/bin
6. The jscoverage documentation does not mention it but you must start jscoverage-server from the directory where it is to be serving the javascript from. So to run their examples move to the directory where their example code is:
   
   cd jscoverage-0.4/doc/example/
7. Now start up the coverage server from the same directory the javascript is located:
   
   jscoverage-server –verbose
8. Open up a browser where index.html is the starting point of the code you are going to test:
   
   firefox http://127.0.0.1:8080/jscoverage.html?index.html
9. Execute the code a bit and then move to the store tab and press the store button.
10. Open up another browser to view the results:
    
    firefox jscoverage-report/jscoverage.html
11. Possibly open another browser, like opera, and test with it. All the additional tests will be added to the report.
12. Now if you have the directory available via the network test the code with IE.

At this point it’s a simple matter of writing the javascript as a separate library.
Once in a separate library each function can be called separately.
Unit tests can then be written attempting to maximize code coverage and results can be verified.
Once this is done then the user interfaces can be tested.

There are some caveats listed in the manual. They all seem quite acceptable.

1. JSCoverage adds instrumentation to JavaScript code, which will slow down execution speed. Expect instrumented code to take at least twice as much time to run.
2. JSCoverage currently instruments only .js files; it does not instrument code in script elements in HTML files.
3. HTML files must use relative URLs to reference scripts. If you use an absolute URL, your page will reference the original uninstrumented script rather than the instrumented one, and no code coverage data will be collected.
4. JSCoverage instruments physical lines of code rather than logical JavaScript statements; it works bests with code that has exactly one statement per line. If you put multiple statements on a line, or split a line across two or more statements, you may get strange results.
5. JSCoverage uses frames. Some web pages that use frames may not function properly when run under JSCoverage, especially those which try to access the top-level frame (window.top, target=”_top”, etc.).

I don’t see any way of incorporating the results into vim.
It would be nice if that were possible though.
I think the best that can be done would simply be to start a page that would call the various functions with assert statements.
Perhaps via a bash script.
Maybe I’ll learn more when I look into the jsunit tools.
As it now stands all of the error paths are questionable.
Still it’s better than no code coverage.

Upgrading To Ubuntu Jaunty From Intrepid

I just finished upgrading one computer. The boot up process seems much faster but in reality it only dropped from 28 to 21 seconds. I like it. Here are the problems I encountered:

• I had to install pybootchartgui to see the png files. This was not available in the earlier releases of Ubuntu. You got the png files just fine without them. Not a big deal.
• The auto login feature was turned off. Again no big deal. “System->Administration->Login Window” then tab to “Security” and click the check off box for “Enable Automatic Login” and supply the proper user.
• The wireless network is no longer automatically logged into consistently. Actually it’s only worked once out of four boots now. I see the developers claiming it is not a bug and that people must have faulty hardware and such. Same old story with whiny developers. It will probably be taken care of within a week. Until then I have to have a mouse plugged into that machine so I can manually turn on the network and then I can use the regular networked mouse and keyboard through Synergy.
• The first attempt at upgrading failed after about 5 hours. It was half way through. I restarted it and it finished over night. This is the first time an upgrade between Ubuntu versions has worked for me…
• I will probably want to wipe the disk and use ext4 at some point. Maybe on the next release of Ubuntu when the bugs have been worked out by actual people using it.

UPDATE 2009.04.27: I installed Jaunty 32 bit desktop on an old computer this weekend from scratch. (After I got the computer working for him.) It was not obvious to me how to install ext4. So I stuck with ext3. Still it starts in only 19 seconds! The system was snappy and everbody was pleased. I’ve now looked into ext4 and it is not ready for use. According to the official Ubuntu site  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JauntyJackalope/ReleaseNotes#line-145 there are numerous errors with ext4 including hanging when files are deleted, not booting with grub, and possible data losses.

Stripped Google Gears Causing Accidents

Attempting to use Google Gears when it is not installed on a user’s browser causes an error. You’d think their library would handle this more gracefully than just crashing but it doesn’t.
UPDATED 2009.04.04: Their library should define the call but return something akin to an alert warning the user/developer

The crash occurs on this line:

g_db = google.gears.factory.create(‘beta.database’);

I pulled out my “JavaScript The Definitive Guide 5th Edition” looking for how to get around this. (This is my primary reference book for all things JavaScript. Perhaps if I were better at JavaScript it would be second nature but I’m not good at JavaScript so I spend lots of time looking things up.) I figured “google…” was not defined. So I looked at the index and put a paperclip on each page in the book referenced by the index. Then I tried all sorts of combinations none of which would work. Things like:

if (google === undefined) {
alert(“A”);
} else {
alert(“B”);
}

and

if (google == undefined) {
alert(“A”);
} else {
alert(“B”);
}

and

if (“gears” in google) {
alert(“A”);
} else {
alert(“B”);
}

and

if (google) {
alert(“A”);
} else {
alert(“B”);
}

and

if (google.gears) {
alert(“A”);
} else {
alert(“B”);
}

and

if (“length” in google) {
alert(“A”);
} else {
alert(“B”);
}

but none of above worked! There were no other solutions in my reference book. My reference book doth sucketh.

So I used a try/catch for a while but I’d still get an error message in the “error console”. The try/catch is ugly but it let me do what I needed and polluting the error console seems to be acceptable. Everybody does it. Just leave the error console open while browsing the web to see how rampant the pollution is.

However I revisited this problem today. After extensive googling seeing all sorts of “solutions” that were similar to the above and which did not work I happened to find the following:

if (typeof(google) == ‘undefined’) {

I’m using Firefox 3.0.8 if this makes any difference. It’s the very latest version as of this month from Mozilla. I’ve got to remember this solution in the future!

Sorry state of “agrep”…

One very useful tool is “agrep”. Say a customers calls in and they live on “pentrose”. If you had a directory of customers you might be able to do a search for them by typing “agrep -i -2 pentrose *.*”. The “-2″ says find any characters that are off by two or less from “pentrose”. So “Penrose”, “pentroose”, “Pentrous” and “Pentrouse” would all have matched. This is very helpful especially considering google maps and thomas brother maps often spell street names slightly different. Unfortunately the “-l” option telling agrep to list the file names does not work. See the following dump:

/customers$ agrep -V

This is agrep version 3.0, 1994.

/customers$ locate agrep
/usr/bin/agrep
/usr/share/doc/agrep
/usr/share/doc/agrep/README.gz
/usr/share/doc/agrep/agrep.algorithms
/usr/share/doc/agrep/agrep.ps.1.gz
/usr/share/doc/agrep/agrep.ps.2.gz
/usr/share/doc/agrep/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/agrep/changelog.gz
/usr/share/doc/agrep/contribution.list
/usr/share/doc/agrep/copyright
/usr/share/man/man1/agrep.1.gz
/var/cache/apt/archives/agrep_4.17-5_i386.deb
/var/lib/dpkg/info/agrep.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/agrep.md5sums
/customers$ agrep -il -1  biider *.*html
customer_2401.shtml
*** glibc detected *** agrep: double free or corruption (top): 0x0821bf48 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6[0xb7e8aa85]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(cfree+0×90)[0xb7e8e4f0]
agrep[0x804b7df]
agrep[0x805751c]
agrep[0x8055dea]
agrep[0x80571bc]
agrep[0x8057228]
agrep[0x8066519]
/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe0)[0xb7e35450]
agrep[0x8048b81]
======= Memory map: ========
08048000-08068000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 6931968    /usr/bin/agrep
08068000-08069000 rw-p 00020000 08:01 6931968    /usr/bin/agrep
08069000-0823a000 rw-p 08069000 00:00 0          [heap]
b7b00000-b7b21000 rw-p b7b00000 00:00 0
b7b21000-b7c00000 —p b7b21000 00:00 0
b7cdf000-b7ce9000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 5744705    /lib/libgcc_s.so.1
b7ce9000-b7cea000 rw-p 0000a000 08:01 5744705    /lib/libgcc_s.so.1
b7cfd000-b7cfe000 rw-p b7cfd000 00:00 0
b7cfe000-b7d3d000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6964092    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_CTYPE
b7d3d000-b7e1e000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6964091    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_COLLATE
b7e1e000-b7e1f000 rw-p b7e1e000 00:00 0
b7e1f000-b7f68000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 4252758    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.7.so
b7f68000-b7f69000 r–p 00149000 08:01 4252758    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.7.so
b7f69000-b7f6b000 rw-p 0014a000 08:01 4252758    /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc-2.7.so
b7f6b000-b7f6e000 rw-p b7f6b000 00:00 0
b7f70000-b7f71000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6964097    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_NUMERIC
b7f71000-b7f72000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6964100    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_TIME
b7f72000-b7f73000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6964095    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_MONETARY
b7f73000-b7f74000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6971396    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_MESSAGES/SYS_LC_MESSAGES
b7f74000-b7f75000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6964098    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_PAPER
b7f75000-b7f76000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6964096    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_NAME
b7f76000-b7f77000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6964090    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_ADDRESS
b7f77000-b7f78000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6964099    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_TELEPHONE
b7f78000-b7f79000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6964094    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_MEASUREMENT
b7f79000-b7f80000 r–s 00000000 08:01 6947512    /usr/lib/gconv/gconv-modules.cache
b7f80000-b7f81000 r–p 00000000 08:01 6964093    /usr/lib/locale/en_US.utf8/LC_IDENTIFICATION
b7f81000-b7f83000 rw-p b7f81000 00:00 0
b7f83000-b7f84000 r-xp b7f83000 00:00 0          [vdso]
b7f84000-b7f9e000 r-xp 00000000 08:01 5693498    /lib/ld-2.7.so
b7f9e000-b7fa0000 rw-p 00019000 08:01 5693498    /lib/ld-2.7.so
bf89e000-bf8c4000 rw-p bffda000 00:00 0          [stack]
Aborted
customers$

You’d think such a handy utility would be kept up-to-date. Yet it says it is version 3 from 12 years ago. This is not true. The actual version synaptic gives is 4.17-5.

To get around this goofiness and get the documented “-l” option without the core dump use:

/customers$ agrep -i -1 biider *.* | awk ‘{ print $1 }’ | sort | uniq
customer_2401.shtml:
customer_6986.php:
/customers$

I just put it into a script file called “f” so I can simply type “f biider” and view the files…

#!/bin/bash
if [ "1" = "$#" ]; then
time gvim +/$1 $(agrep -1 -i $1 /customers/*.*html /customers/*.php | awk -F”:” ‘{ print $1 }’ | sort -rn | uniq )
elif [ "2" = "$#" ]; then
time gvim +/$1 -n $(agrep -2 -i $2 $(agrep -1 -i $1 /customers/*.*html /customers/*.php | awk -F”:” ‘{ print $1 }’ | sort -rn | uniq) | awk -F”:” ‘{ print $1 }’ | sort -rn | uniq )
else
echo “wrong number of arguments”
fi

agrep is so very useful. Somebody really should fix it. Until then use my workaround.

gvim tips

This post will be updated every time I have to do something in vim taking more than a few seconds to get right. Or when I find interesting reference information I don’t know or forget on a regular basis. The idea is to include everything I do and need with vim in this post.

I prefer using gvim for some reason. Don’t really have a reason I can remember. The useless toolbar on top can be turned off with:

set guioptions-=T

The most useful command in all of vi/vim land I have ever used is the following held within the .vimrc or whatever. It allows the line under the cursor to be executed. With clever useage vi becomes very useful. I’ve used it on all versions of vi for decades.

:map ** “zyy:@z

along with the following that needs to sometimes be modified heavily depending on the version of vi. This allows you to bounce between the two buffers with just a keystroke. (Removing the ability to use the standard ‘;’ for what it was intended for.)

:map ; :e#

When viewing a downloaded google spreadsheet in csv format of all deposits the following displays the summary of each deposit

:g/^\d\{1,3},”\p\{-}”,200

Removes the first 7 words of each line and replaces them with “rm “. Helpful when editing a file made with “ls > file”.

:%s/\(\S\+\s\+\)\{7\}\(.*\)/rm \2 /

Using vim’s internal sort. Start by marking the beginning and ending line with say ‘b’ and ‘e’. (Note the ‘}’ does not help in specifying range unfortunately.) Then type:

:’b,’esort

I’m always forgetting vim’s regexps metacharacters. The following I stole from this excellent guide http://www.geocities.com/volontir/

.	any character except new line
\s	whitespace character
\S	non whitespace character
\d	digit
\D	non-digit
\x	hex digit
\X	non-hex digit
\o	octal digit
\O	non-octal digit
\h	head of word character (a,b,c…z, A,B,C…Z and _)
\H	non-head of word character
\p	printable character
\P	like \p, but excluding digits
\w	word character
\W	non-word character
\a	alphabetic character
\A	non-alphabetic character
\l	lowercase character
\L	non-lowercase character
\u	uppercase character
\U	non-uppercase character

Non-greedy quantifiers where n and m are positive integers (>0):

\{-}	matches 0 or more of the preceding atom, as few as possible
\{-n,m}	matches 1 to m of the preceding characters…
\{-n,}	matches at least 1 or more of the preceding characters…
\{-,m}	matches 1 or more of the preceding characters…

The greedy options have all the obvious non-greedy options plus the semi-obvious extras as follow

\{n}	Matches exactly n characters. It is not greedy or non-greedy.
*	Greedily matches 0 or more of the preceding whatever. “.*” matches everything including an empty line. Notice there is no backslash before the ‘*’
\+	Matches 1 or more of the preceding whatever.
\=	Matches 0 or 1 of the preceding whatever.

There are valuable replacement options:

&	The entire part matched by the pattern.
\1	When 1 is used it is the first pattern. A 0 is the same as the & above and probably makes more sense. I don’t know if two digit numbers can be used or if it stops at 9.
~	The previously substituted string.
\L \U \E \e	Turns upper or lower case on until either of the end control characters are encountered.
\r	Splits the line in two by adding a return character.
\l \u	Makes the next character upper or lower case.

My GMail Got Hacked!

I have not been changing my passwords. So some Chinese hackers got into my email account, like they have done with thousands of others from yahoo, hotmail, etc., and sent the following message:

hi:
New shopping new life!
How are u doing these days?Yesterday I found a web of a large trading company from china,which is an agent of all the well-known digital product factories,and facing to both wholesalers,retailsalers,and personal customer all over the world. They export all kinds of digital products and offer most competitive and reasonable price and high quality goods for our clients,so i think we you make a big profit if we do business with them.And they promise they will provide the best after-sales-service.In my opinion we can make a trial order to test that.
Look forward to your early reply!
The Web address: www.stuffunion.com
E-mail: stuffunion@188.com
MSN : stuffunion@live.cn

When you google this company you see they have collected quite a bit of money from unsuspecting people over the years. It’s like the Nigerian emails. However they keep the interest up by hacking email and spreading their outfit as if the person who sent the email is actually endorsing them. Finally they delete out all of your address book.

I’m going to go back to using Thunderbird as my email client instead of relying on the web interface. And only accessing it via linux. (I noticed I got hacked when I used M$.) And I’ll start using pgp again. I also downloaded a password maker so I can type “makepasswd -chars 20” and then stick the passwords up on a sheet on the wall so I don’t lose them. I did that already with gmail.

Update 2009.03.31
I’ve noticed some sites only allow passwords built with certain characters. Or some rate the strength of your password. Some require special characters or only rate your password as strong until you use special characters. In these situations supply a string like the one below:

makepasswd --chars 30 --string 'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ1234567890\!@#$%^&*'

UPDATE 2009.06.01 I noticed cutting and pasting from the above did not work because wordpress changed the characters. So I updated the above with the ascii codes from HTML ASCII Reference and HTML ISO-8859-1 Reference. Now it should be a simple copy and paste.

Ubuntu & The HP Officejet Pro L7780 All-in-One, REVISITED

Now that I’ve been using the HP Officejet Pro L7780 extensively and feel like I know the printer inside-out my feelings have solidified since writing

Ubuntu & The HP Officejet Pro L7780 All-in-One

The L7780 All-in-One is the best you can buy for a Linux machine. However it is not good enough. It’s a good first attempt at a workable All-in-One solution for us Linux users. Hopefully the next generation will be useable…

Scanning. The document feeder does not handle double sided pages well. If you are patient, don’t mind starting a 10 page scan multiple times, clearing out paper jambs, then perhaps this printer will be good enough for you. You’ll also have documents that are often askew since the feeder does a poor job of keeping them aligned. If time is money for you then get a M$ solution using paperport and the Brother MFC 8660DN All-in-One for scanning. It’s like comparing an old beat up 60 year old vehicle with a new car. If you want to get across the country and not make it a three month experience you’ll want the new vehicle.

Sending Faxes. The L7780 fax works fine. However it does not give you a confirmation with the picture of the first page. This makes the confirmation virtually useless. And without a confirmation why bother sending a fax involving money? In other words the fax on the L7780, though it works, is useless in a business environment.
2009.03.16 UPDATE: Receiving Faxes. I was getting four or so junk fax receipts to every good fax. A junk fax receipt is where somebody attempts to send you something but the L7780 prints a page saying the line quality or the sending fax machine is not up-to-par and so the L7780 was not able to receive the fax. Instead it simply says a fax was missed. GRRRRR. I don’t get this problem with my Brother MFC 8660DN. Every time the fax line rings a good fax is printed. Regardless of poor line quality or an out-of-date fax machine on the other end. As a result I unplugged the fax line from the HP machine and now use the MFC machine exclusively. I can’t be losing money due to missed faxes!

Printing. The print quality is good enough. It’s nice to print out pictures from a digital camera. I understand there are much better printers for this but this is acceptable for me. The speed is not so great. It chugs and pauses and chugs and pauses and chugs away and pauses some more before each page is printed. And if it is double sided then you have to wait while it holds the page waiting for the ink to dry. I’m not too keen on the chugging. The entire desk shakes. The printer is going to wear itself out in a few years the way it bangs about.
2009.03.16 UPDATE: I bought a new box of paper from CostCo and the printer does not seem to like it. The paper I got says “Advantage Multi-System Paper, NOW Brighter! 92 Brightness, 20 weight (lb) 10 reams 5000 total sheets quantity, Letter”. The first 4 sheets of paper I printed the same thing on hoping it would get better. Each time the printer would spend a few minutes shaking and twittering doing self-diagnostics. Each time parts of the standard black lines would be faded or missing. On the fourth try it got everything right. I had turned off the machine on a couple of those tests hoping that would reset things. Well this morning it’s back to not printing out correctly. There are no error messages. Nothing needing refilling. It’s just not printing right. Not sure what to do about this. I don’t want to waste another hour fiddling with it. Why can’t it simply just work?
2009.03.17 UPDATE: Sometime during the day the printer decided to start printing correctly. It probably took 20 or so pages before the fading stopped and the print outs started looking normal.

Document Feeder. It seems to be made of small plastic melting gears driven by a malnourished hampster. As you listen to it get on with a big document you can’t help but cross your fingers as the gears sound as if they are getting worse and worse. They make grinding sounds and random clicks. The tiny motor seems too under-powered as it slows from time-to-time. And the paper-jambs are ever-present…

Ink. The old L7780 I sent back dribbled through two yellow cartridges. I think perhaps it was defective. The new L7780 has not wasted any ink yet. I hope it stays that way. Ink costs are not that high. They seem comparable with the toner cartridges on a laser printer. They cost significantly less but are used up much more frequently. Of course I’d rather have an option to use large bottles of ink so the price could be dramatically decreased. It might even be cheaper than toners. (Don’t buy from HP. Instead buy the long lasting cartridges that have double or triple the capacity at a third the price dropping the cost by almost a magnitude.)
2009.03.01 UPDATE: The ink cartridges will not stay in the machine! I changed a cartridge, closed the door, and the printer spits not only the one I changed out but the one next to it! I spent half an hour trying to get the cartridges to stay in with no luck. Apparently they are spring loaded and are suppose to catch on something but they are not. Finally out of desperation I put some packing foam between the cheap plastic door and the ink cartridges to keep them from popping out. The door looks like it will break at some point but this solution has worked now for more than two weeks. This printer reminds me of the toys found in the bottom of cereal boxes.

Conclusion. It’s a toy attempting to offer everything. If you only have a Linux computer then you have no choice and must buy this All-in-One from HP. However if you have business needs then you’ve got to dump it and move to M$ and more heavy duty solutions…

2009.03.16 UPDATE: HP has a new printer out. It’s supposedly for business. About $100 more than this one. The “HP Officejet Pro 8500 Premier” is priced in the low $400s. Basically half a grand with shipping and such. I’m very dubious since it looks similar to the L7780. It does not even hold a ream of paper. Shouldn’t a business printer hold two or three reams? Hmmm. Ok, what about the digital filing capabilities? Did they clean it up so the PDF pages are automatically straightened before they are saved away? Probably not. HP certainly has the name. Too bad they don’t pay attention to the final details the way Apple does inorder to make insanely great products…

2009.03.16 UPDATE: I’m at the point where I’m thinking a single function color laser printer from HP would be the way to go. Surely HP does a decent job on a single function printer? However this HP Officejet Pro L7780 All-in-One, except for the unaligned cattywompus scanning of single sided pages into PDFs on a linux machine, is not a workable solution. It’s as if it is an alpha version of a demo. It’s a shame HP does not take pride in making complete working solutions. I can’t recommend the L7780 as a productive useful ready for business product. Perhaps it’s suited for kids and students who have the time to fiddle endlessly with it.

2009.04.13 UPDATE: Over the weekend I scanned in over 600 documents using the digital filing feature. That’s the feature making HPs unique. They leave a PDF image on my Ubuntu machine in the directory I specified. I noticed that every 100 or so documents the feed mechanism would get confused and leave the last sheet still in the mechanism. At first I would turn off and on the machine hoping it’s power on check would spit the sheet out. When that did not work after consistently I tried just reading in the next document as if there were no documents stuck in the machine. This worked. I’d get some sort of error but the new document would not be read in and the sheet stuck in the machine would be spit out.

2009.04.13 UPDATE: I got a new type of paper-jam today. Usually the paper-jams, 99% of them, are due to the poor quality document feeder. This one was in the print mechanism. I had to split the printer apart at the joint under the big keypad and remove the paper there. It wasn’t too bad. However it was the last thing I thought of checking and I already had the thing apart on the floor…

2009.04.15 UPDATE: While changing the ink cartridges the old problem of them popping out as soon as I closed the lid resurfaced. Basically the cartridges pop out as soon as the print heads pass by them. This only happens after you close the cartridge lid and the printer does it’s thing to recognize them. My old solution of padding the interior with foam packing was no longer working. Or it would work for a few minutes. This time I fixed the problem by noticing the interior of the ink cartridge area has some holes on the side that would hold a reinforcing bar. That bar, or dowel, would then snuggly keep pressure on the backs of all four ink cartridges. I looked around for something I could use and settled on a writing pen. I cut it down to the right length, stuck it in, and voila. Perfect fit. It keeps a slight but solid pressure from behind on all the ink cartridges. The lid can be closed so it’s not noticed. And if I ever send the printer back my HP warranty will still be good. What a pain in the neck though. Why does HP make its customers go through this crap?

2009.04.16 UPDATE: I used the chat facility on HPs website to ask if there were an equivalent of the L7780 using laser instead of ink. Yes, the lowest cost LaserJet solution is $2,499.99! It is their new HP Color LaserJet CM3530 MFP. Despite this costing two grand more it still does not have a fax machine. That version of the model goes for three grand. And yet the fax machine still does not print an image of the first page with the status of the transmission. The person said none of the HP faxes have this functionality. So basically you need to use another company if faxes are important. This printer has the equivalent of “Digital Filing” but they call it something else. I did not ask if it worked with Linux and Ubuntu in particular. I assume it does and they probably wouldn’t know anyways. There are no wireless options. It is still maringal in that it only accepts 500 sheets of paper if you buy the optional paper tray. (Why can’t they just make the standard paper tray hold 1500 sheets of paper?) If possible, that is if I see one on craigs list for under $800 which is what the product should really be selling for, I’ll buy one. As it is there is no way I’d spend nearly $3000 dollars on a printer with lousy specs. What are they thinking? I wonder what they use for their HP-UX computers?