The Ringtail

I have had a perennial issue with printing to work printers through my linux laptop. I have been printing to our work printer just fine for a couple of months, but a recent move to Ubuntu left me unable to connect again. I have had mixed results with this over the years, and the problem seems to affect some distros and not others – the problem is:

- open the ‘Printers’ config app
- use the ‘browse for SAMBA share’ option
- find the printer
- enter my credentials and click to verify them
- dialog comes up to say “This print share is not accessible”

Now, a search on Google turns up many, many results, most of which relate to getting a home Windows printer visible to Linux, and none of which will solve my particular problem. Linux Mint used to be great in that it would always connect even when Ubuntu or Debian wouldn’t, but even Mint failed this time. I resolved to fix this once and for all this week.

When I browse to the printer using the printer admin UI, I can see the printer, but the name it is populating into the name field is wrong. Say the share is called “my printer share” – the name that is brought over to the config window is “my20printer20share”. It’s trying to put a “%20″ in place of the space, but “%” is a disallowed character so it doesn’t come across. And “my20printer20share” is not validating as it is the wrong name. Root of the problem found, but no way to fix as I can’t enter the space characters using the printer admin tool.

The solution is to use the CUPS web interface. Here are the steps I took to get things working:

- Work through the process of adding a printer using the printer admin GUI, then copy out the name that is populated from browsing for the printer
- cloce the admin gui and open a web browser
- go to http://localhost:631 to see the CUPS admin interface
- select the ‘administration’ tab
- click the ‘add printer’ button
- select ‘Windows Printer via SAMBA’ then click ‘continue’
- paste the address you copied in step 1, but add a “%” in front of each “20″ – all spaces are then encoded correctly as “%20″ (in the example above – “smb://my%20printer%20share”)
- go through the rest of the steps and you should have a fully working printer

I hope this helps someone else get things working – this has been bugging me for ages on and off but I’m sure that this has been the root cause of it all along.

I was reminded today of a very important principle about project management–communication is key. Thanks for the heads up I hear you say, with only barely concealed sarcasm. Surely this is so trivial its not even worth saying? Well, sometimes its the trivial stuff that trips us up. Maybe it’s mostly the trivial stuff that trips us up.

The project I am currently running is all about content management. As a result we have been thinking a lot about metadata and taxonomy issues, and are lucky enough to have a very smart team of people on board who understand these things. We sent out a metadata definition sheet for comment this week, outlining the metadata fields we need to apply to our content, with details on what fields were mandatory and where in the taxonomy to link to to get the values for those fields. So far so good – an information geek’s fantasy. Only trouble is, I forget that the understanding about these issues really stops outside of the core team, and the new document was met with bemusement and questions of how relevant this stuff could be to everyone if they don’t even understand what we are proposing. To make matters worse, the split in understanding falls between two floors so I wasn’t even around to hear the negative comments and was carrying blissfully on.

Two things have come together to make sure we head this issue off:

• A weekly team meeting where people are encouraged to raise issues and suggest solutions
• A great team that takes full use of this, who raised this issue and suggested a way forward

We have now decided to bring all documents for distribution to the team meeting and then use the skills within the team to manage how this gets out to the wider organisation. Each part of the team can then take ownership of the documents and help to communicate the project actions to the wider organisation. Having people like this on the team makes my job a hell of a site easier. If the job of the PM at a team level can be an enabling role, making sure the team are enabled to raise and help solve issues to keep the project running along its agreed lines, then more time can be freed up to concentrate on other tasks.

So, a simple error of judgement, easily solved. I’m grateful that we found out about this gap in communication with this document rather than a high-stakes communication to the powers that be.

I’ve been thinking about a quote I picked up from John Gruber:

“The head of Black and Decker once said, folks don’t buy our products because they want one inch drills, they buy our stuff because they want one inch holes.”

I’ve often felt, as a project manager, that I get called in to help people buy drills, and my real job is to help them understand that they need holes. Trouble is that a famous quote from Einstein is also true:

“Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework within which they were created.”

Unless your client understands the truth of this, they are never going to be in the market for holes and you should leave them alone to get on and buy the drills.

I am now working in London for a couple of days a week, probably from now through until October. It’s been good working in a busy office after so long at home or in a small office – nice to have people around to talk to and bounce ideas off. It’s also a bit of a change as I’m doing some project management based work which I haven’t done so much of recently. I’m quite enjoying it actually and hope that I can mix this type of work in with the more development-based stuff I have been doing of late.

Things have been quite busy, but I haven’t really had much to write about either, so things have been a bit quiet from me. A couple of little titbits to throw out for anyone who reads this regularly:

• I am back using my Mac after a brief sojourn into Linux, and am getting to grips with learning Objective-C as I think I need a ‘proper’ language under my belt to give me a better understanding of the internals of how to code properly.

• I have not gone lure fishing for an age and am starting to think that it will be a good long while before I do again. I am enjoying float fishing on the canal and the river – catching more fish, but also having more time to sit back, relax and get to know more about the water and the wildlife. Also, my daughter has been with me one and was very keen on “boring fishing” (as opposed to “exciting” lure fishing) so I am hoping that I will get a good few trips out with her while the weather is good.

• A new project starts up next week so I will probably be working in London two days a week for a little while. Not really looking forward to the travel as I am not really a big fan of The City, but the job will be exciting I think.