backup-manager is a simple and straightforward backup solution and Amazon S3 gives you reliable remote storage.

Since the backup-manager versions in Debian and Ubuntu are little bit outdated, I would recommend installing the 0.7.5 Release from the Website. While the installation of backup-manager is painless, getting the s3 part running a little bit tricky (and undocumented).
The s3 part of backup-manager is based on the Net::Amazon::S3 perl module and this needs the XML::LibXML::XPathContext module, which is, as far as I can see, not included in one of the libxml-*-perl packages in Debian or Ubuntu.

So, this procedure gives you all the needed dependencies:

sudo apt-get install libperl6-slurp-perl libxml2-dev
sudo cpan XML::LibXML
sudo cpan Net::Amazon::S3

Update: (14.06.07) Ubuntu feisty now contains the 7.5.3 version of backup-manager.

Things have changed since dapper…

To get your Yakumo QuickStick DVB-T Reciever working with the new Ubuntu edgy you need new firmware.
Go to http://www.linuxtv.org/download/dvb/firmware/ and download dvb-usb-wt220u-02.fw to /lib/firmware.
Now everything should work again.

To get wpa and the ipw2100 working with the latest Network Manager in Ubuntu Dapper, which finally supports wpa, you will have to update manually the drivers for ieee80211 to version 1.1.12 and ipw2100 to version 1.2.1.

I followed this HowTo (just the part with these two drivers, everything else is already included with Dapper)

That’s why Ubuntu is so great! To get the Yakumo QuickStick DVB-T Reciever up and running (with Dapper) all you have to do is:

1. Get the firmware file dvb-usb-wt220u-01.fw from http://www.linuxtv.org/download/dvb/firmware/
2. Copy this file to /lib/firmware/
3. Plug in the usb stick
4. Fire up kaffeine and scan for stations
5. Enjoy

Here’s how to get the Canon LIDE 60 scanner working with Ubuntu Dapper:

The device is a Genesys Logic GL646 and GL841 based scanner, so it uses the sane genesys driver. Make sure that the driver is enabled in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf.

Now plug in the scanner and run sane-find-scanner and you will get something like this (if not, maybe you should try running this with sudo):

found USB scanner (vendor=0×04a9, product=0×221c, chip=GL841?) at libusb:004:010

Using these values add an entry for the scanner to /etc/sane.d/genesys.conf:

# Canon LiDE 60
usb 0×04a9 0×221c

To use the device as a non-rootl user, you have to prepare udev by editing the libsane udev rules at /etc/udev/rules.d/45-libsane.rules (the actual name of the file may differ, remember Dapper is still in development) and add a line using the values from sane-find-scanner:

# Canon Inc.|LIDE 60
SYSFS{idVendor}==”04a9″, SYSFS{idProduct}==”221c”, MODE=”664″, GROUP=”scanner”

now restart udev with

sudo /etc/init.d/udev restart

Fire up xsane and it should work. Please leave a comment if you know why gnome-volume-manager doesn’t start xsane when I plug in the scanner.

I did it and I can say the results from this test are really meaningfull, because:

Since it seems that there are no sound patches for the TiMidity MIDI to WAVE converter in the Debian archives, I packaged a nice collection of patches by Eric A. Welsh into the timidity-eaw-patches package and added it to my Debian repository.

I joined the Debian Perl Group yesterday. This group will constantly improve the debian coverage of available perl modules.

Discovered Gnome clipboard manager this morning, a cool tool that keeps your clipboard content in memory, so the clipboard won’ get lost even after you close the application you copied from.

Added this to my Debian repositoy.