Installing Epson Perfection 660 USB Scanner in Ubuntu 7.10/8.04

Unfortunately Ubuntu did not autodetect my scanner but the installation was trivial.

1. Obtained the driver file from http://www.epson.com.sg/epson/drivers/driver_download.htm?dc=1&mode=3&m=false&catid=5&pid=46
2. Unzip the file. The file we need is TAIL_061.BIN (which is inside /DATA/BIN inside the zip file). Put this file in /usr/share/sane (or anywhere you please) and give read permission to all (chmod a+r /usr/share/sane/TAIL_061.BIN as root)
3. Edit /etc/sane.d/snapscan.conf and change following line. (do as root)
   

    firmware /usr/share/sane/snapscan/your-firmwarefilefirmware
   
     to
   
   firmware /usr/share/sane/TAIL_061.BIN.bin
   

   
   
4. Plug the USB cable
5. Start xsane (type xsane in a terminal or find the program from the menu)
6. Thats it!
   

Local DNS cache to speed up Ubuntu/Debian

This article explains how to setup dnsmasq to speed up dns requests.

http://ubuntu.wordpress.com/2006/08/02/local-dns-cache-for-faster-browsing/