To get it to work, an unneeded package needs to be erased:

yum erase libflashsupport

Credit: Dutchtechies

Knox got an Airport Express for his Mac. For now, we’ll use it as our music streaming solution, though my eventual goal is to get something like a Squeezebox or Sonos.

Setting up the AEX to work with the Mac was mostly simple, with one caveat: to get onto our existing wireless network, we had to provide the hex version of our 64-bit ASCII WEP key as the 40-bit WEP key the Mac dialog was asking for.

For Linux, it’s slightly more involved. I found out about raop_play, a simplistic music client that, most importantly, includes a driver such that ALSA applications can stream music to a virtual audio card which actually gets streamed to the AEX. Pretty nifty.

I followed Nils Winkler’s instructions for setting up raop_play. Here’s the additional stuff I had to do to get this to work:

• Before compiling, install the following packages libsamplerate-devel fltk fltk-devel libid3tag-devel fltk-fluid

• Delete the line #include <linux/config.h> in drivers/alsa_raoppcm.c

• Patch the kernel module source

• Create Nils’s suggested scripts: load_airport_express_driver, start_airport_express, and stop_airport_express. Modify start_airport_express to have the IP address of the AEX.

At this point, the basic infrastructure was working:

• Run start_airport_express

• Verify the sound “card” is installed: cat /proc/asound/cards

• Play some music: sudo mplayer -ao alsa:device=hw=1.0 some_song.mp3

Unfortunately, I couldn’t run as non-root. My devices on /dev/snd look like this:

 drwxr-xr-x   2 root root        180 2008-04-06 07:44 .
 drwxr-xr-x  14 root root       5200 2008-04-06 07:44 ..
 crw-rw----+  1 root root     116, 6 2008-04-06 07:42 controlC0
 crw-rw----   1 root root     116, 8 2008-04-06 07:44 controlC1
 crw-rw----+  1 root root     116, 5 2008-04-06 07:42 pcmC0D0c
 crw-rw----+  1 root root     116, 4 2008-04-06 07:42 pcmC0D0p
 crw-rw----   1 root root     116, 7 2008-04-06 07:44 pcmC1D0p
 crw-rw----+  1 root root     116, 3 2008-04-06 07:42 seq
 crw-rw----+  1 root root     116, 2 2008-04-06 07:42 timer

The C1 entries are used raop_play, but you’ll notice they don’t have a + in the permissions column. Why is that? What does the + mean? Tell me if you know!

On a hunch, though, I chowned controlC1 and pcmC1d0p to my user group—and I could play as non-root.

Well, mostly. I can stream music from applications that let me select the ALSA device, such as mplayer and xmss. Unfortunately, I don’t see how to configure rhythmbox to use raop_player. (Tell me if you know!)

Knox upgraded to Leopard, and the simple printer sharing (Linux to mac) that had been so easy to set up before stopped working. After implementing the tips here and here, I discovered that the shared printer can be found under the “Default” tab of “Print & Fax”, not under the “IP” tab. Before the upgrade, the shared printer just showed up immediately.

A friend gave us a new Epson Stylus R280 printer (he’s been getting several free ones with his computer and related purchases). This is good; we’ve been needing an everyday-type printer.

I started looking for drivers. The Epson site does not support Linux, but it did point me to the Avasys site, which has a driver. Unfortunately, the source RPM wouldn’t compile, but the downloaded tarball seemed to be working fine. It asked me for the name and location of the device, at which point, crossing my fingers, I proceeded to unpack the printer and hook it up….

And CUPS just recognized it instantly! I didn’t even have to finish the manual setup of the driver I had downloaded. The test page came out fine!

Is this what life is like for Mac users?