Hardware
 

The window is divided in two columns.

The left column contains a list of the detected hardware. The devices are grouped by categories. Click on the > to expand the content of a category. Each device can be selected in this column.

The right column displays information about the selected device. The Help -> Fields description gives some information about the content of the fields.

According to which type of device is selected, either one or two buttons are available at the bottom of the right column:

Options

The options menu gives the opportunity to check boxes to enable automatic detection:

By default these detections are not enabled, because they are slow. Check the appropriate box(es) if you have this hardware connected. Detection will be operational the next time this tool is started.

This tool^[13] lets you manage the 3D desktop effects on your operating system. 3D effects are turned off by default.

To use this tool, you need to have the glxinfo package installed. If the package is not installed, you will be prompted to do so before drak3d can start.

After starting drak3d, you will be presented with a menu window. Here you can choose either No 3D Desktop Effects or Compiz Fusion. Compiz Fusion is part of a composite/window manager, which includes hardware-accelerated special effects for your desktop. Choose Compiz Fusion to turn it on.

If this is your first time using this program after a clean installation of Mageia, you will get a warning message telling you which packages need to be installed in order to use Compiz Fusion. Click on the Ok button to continue.

Once the appropriate packages are installed, you will notice that Compiz Fusion is selected in the drak3d menu, but you must log out and log back in for the changes to take effect.

After logging back in, Compiz Fusion will be activated. To configure Compiz Fusion, see the page for the ccsm (CompizConfig Settings Manager) tool.

The keyboarddrake tool^[15] helps you configure the basic layout for the keyboard that you wish to use on Mageia. It affects the keyboard layout for all users on the system. It can be found in the Hardware section of the Mageia Control Center (MCC) labelled "Configure mouse and keyboard".

Here you can select which keyboard layout you wish to use. The names (listed in alphabetical order) describe the language, country, and/or ethnicity each layout should be used for.

This menu lets you select the type of keyboard you are using. If you are unsure of which to choose, it is best to leave it as the default type.

Printing is managed on Mageia by a server named CUPS. It has its own configuration interface which is accessible via an Internet browser, but Mageia offers its own tool for installing printers called system-config-printer which is shared with other distributions such as Fedora, Mandriva, Ubuntu and openSUSE.

You should enable the non-free repository before proceeding with the installation, because some drivers may only be available in this way.

Printer installation is carried out in the Hardware section of the Mageia Control Centre. Select the Configure printing and scanning tool^[17].

MCC will ask for the installation two packages:

It is necessary to accept this installation to continue. Up to 230MB of dependencies are needed.

To add a printer, choose the "Add" printer button. The system will try to detect any printers and the ports available. The screenshot displays a printer connected to a parallel port. If a printer is detected, such as a printer on a USB port, it will be displayed on the first line. The window will also attempt to configure a network printer.

This usually refers to USB printers. The utility automatically finds the name of the printer and displays it. Select the printer and then click "Next". If there is a known driver associated for the printer, it will be automatically installed. If there is more than one driver or no known drivers, a window will ask you to select or furnish one, as explained in the next paragraph. Continue with the section called “Complete the installation process”

When you select a port, the system loads a driver list and displays a window to select a driver. The choice can be made through one of the following options.

By selecting from the database, the window suggests a printer manufacturer first, and then a device and a driver associated with it. If more than one driver is suggested, select one which is recommended, unless you have encountered some problems with that one before, in this case select the one which know to work.

After the driver selection, a window requests some information which will allow the system to designate and discover the printer. The first line is the name under which the device will appear in applications in the list of available printers. The installer then suggests printing a test page. After this step, the printer is added and appears in the list of available printers.

Network printers are printers that are attached directly to a wired or wireless network, that are attached to a printserver or that are attached to another workstation that serves as printserver.

The printer's Mac-address is a serial number given to the printer or printserver or computer it is attached to, that can be obtained from a configuration page printed by the printer or which may be written on a label on the printer or printserver. If your shared printer is attached to a Mageia system, you can run ifconfig on it as root to find the MAC-address. It is the sequence of numbers and letters after "HWaddr".

You can add your network printer by choosing the protocol it uses to talk to your computer over the network. If you don't know which protocol to choose, you can try the Network Printer - Find Network Printer option in the Devices menu and give the IP address of the printer in the box on the right, where it says "host".

If the tool recognises your printer or printserver, it will propose a protocol and a queue, but you can choose a more appropriate one from the list below it or give the correct queue name if it isn't in the list.

Look in the documentation that came with your printer or printserver to find which protocol(s) it supports and for possible specific queue names.

One current technique is one developed by Hewlett-Packard and known as JetDirect. It allows access to a printer directly connected to the network via an Ethernet port. You must know the IP-address at which the printer is known on the network. This technique is also used inside some ADSL-routers which contain an USB port to connect the printer. In this case, the IP-address is that of the router. Note that the tool "Hp Device manager" can manage dynamically configured IP-adress, setting an URI like hp:/net/<name-of-the-printer> . In this case, fixed IP-adress is not required.

Choose the option AppSocket/HP JetDirect as the protocol and set the address in Host:, do not change the Port Number, unless you know that it needs to be changed. After the selection of the protocol, the selection of the driver is the same as above.

The other protocols are:

The URI can also be added directly. Here are some examples on how to form the URI:

Additional information can be found in the CUPS documentation.

You can access the properties of the device. The menu allows access to parameters for the CUPS server. By default a CUPS server is launched on your system, but you can specify a different one with the Server | Connect... menu, another window which gives access to the tuning of other specific parameters of the server, following Server | Settings.

You can find some information on occurring errors during printing by inspecting /var/log/cups/error_log

You can also access to a tool to diagnose problems using the Help | Troubleshoot menu.

It is possible that some drivers for specific printers are not available in Mageia or are not functional. In this case, have a look at the openprinting site to check if a driver for your device is available. If yes, check if the package is already present in Mageia and in this case install it manually. Then, redo the installation process to configure the printer. In all cases, report the problem in bugzilla or on the forum if you are comfortable with this tool and furnish the model and driver information and whether the printer works or not after installation. Here are some sources to find other up-to-date drivers or for more recent devices.

Brother printers

This page give a list of drivers provided by Brother. Search the driver for your device, download the rpm(s) and install.

You should install Brother drivers before running the configuration utility.

Hewlett-Packard printers and All in one devices

These devices use the hplip tool. It is installed automatically after the detection or the selection of the printer. You can find other information here. The tool "HP Device Manager" is available in the System menu. Also view configuration for the management of the printer.

A HP All in one device must be installed as a printer and the scanner features will be added. Note that sometimes, the Xsane interface doesn't allow to scan films or slides (the lighting slid can't operate). In this case, it is possible to scan, using the standalone mode, and save the picture on a memory card or USB stick inserted in the device. Afterwards, open your favourite imaging software and load your picture from the memory card which is appeared in the /media folder.

Samsung colour printer

For specific Samsung and Xerox colour printers, this site provides drivers for the QPDL protocol.

Epson printers and scanners

Drivers for Epson printers are available from this search page. For the scanner part, you must install the "iscan-data" package first, then "iscan" (in this order). A iscan-plugin package can also be available and is to install. Choose the rpm packages according to your architecture.

It is possible that the iscan package will generate a warning about a conflict with sane. Users have reported that this warning can be ignored.

Canon printers

For Canon printers, it may be advisable to install a tool named turboprint available here .

This tool ^[18] allows you to configure a single scanner device or a multifunction device which includes scanning. It also allows you to share local devices connected to this computer with a remote computer or to access remote scanners.

When you start this tool for the first time, you may get the following message:

"SANE packages need to be installed to use scanners

Do you want to install the SANE packages?"

Choose Yes to continue. It will install scanner-gui and task-scanning if they are not yet installed.

If your scanner is identified correctly, so if in the above screen you see the name of your scanner, the scanner is ready for use with, for instance, XSane or Simple Scan.

In that case, you might now want to want to configure the Scanner sharing option. You can read about it in the the section called “Scannersharing”.

However, if your scanner hasn't been correctly identified, and checking its cable(s) and power switch and then pressing Search for new scanners doesn't help, you'll need to press Add a scanner manually.

Choose the brand of your scanner in the list you see, then its type from the list for that brand and click Ok

Figure 1. Choose port

You can leave this setting to Auto-detect available ports unless your scanner's interface is a parallel port. In that case, select /dev/parport0 if you have only one.

After clicking Ok, in most cases you will see a screen similar to the one below.

If you don't get that screen, then please read the the section called “Extra installation steps”.

Here you can choose whether the scanners connected to this machine should be accessible by remote machines and by which remote machines. You can also decide here whether scanners on remote machines should be made available on this machine.

Scanner sharing to hosts : name or IP address of hosts can be added or deleted from the list of hosts allowed to access the local device(s), on this computer.

Usage of remote scanners : name or IP address of hosts can added or deleted from the list of hosts which give access to a remote scanner.

Scanner sharing to hosts: you can add host.

Scanner sharing to hosts: specify which host(s) to add, or allow all remote machines.

"All remote machines" are allowed to access the local scanner.

If the package saned is not yet installed, the tool offers to do it.

At the end, the tool will alter these files:

/etc/sane.d/saned.conf

/etc/sane.d/net.conf

/etc/sane.d/dll.conf to add or comment the directive "net"

It will also configure saned and xinetd to be started on boot.

It is possible that after selecting a port for your scanner in the Figure 1, “Choose port” screen, you need to take one or more extra steps to correctly configure your scanner.