My printer config is hosed

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Author: Vaughn Treude
Date:  
Old-Topics: PLUG has it! Was:KNOPPIX 3.2 available
Subject: My printer config is hosed
Hello all:
My old Epson printer (which I had locally connected to my main Linux box) is
getting ready to give up the ghost, so I decided to try to configure network
access to the HP printer on my wife's Windows 98 system. Consulting Google,
I found a "howto" for using printtool and tried to configure it as lp1. But
the test page did not print or show up on the Windows print queue, even after
several minutes. So I tried again to print to the old Epson; lo and behold,
it would not print. I ran lpc status all:

lp1:
        queuing is enabled
        printing is enabled
        no entries
        no daemon present
lp:
        queuing is enabled
        printing is enabled
        no entries
        no daemon present


So I thought, "daemon's dead, eh?" So I tried lpc start all

lp1:
        printing enabled
        daemon started
lp:
        printing enabled
        daemon started


But doing lpc status all again said there the same old thing, "no daemon
present." I tried restarting /usr/sbin/lpd, and it appeared to run, but then
when I'd run lpc it would say:

lpc: connect: No such file or directory

A web search showed that this message should come up when lpd was not
running, but ps showed that lpd was indeed running. The only recent error
message in syslog was:

Apr  5 12:35:13 nakota ypbind[670]: broadcast: RPC: Timed out.                


So maybe I messed up my /etc/printcap file. Of course, printtool did not
save an old version. The new contents of /etc/printcap are:

##PRINTTOOL3##  SMB cdj880 600x600 letter {} DeskJet880C Default 1
lp1:\
        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
        :mx#0:\
        :sh:\
        :lp=/dev/null:\
        :af=/var/spool/lpd/lp/acct\
        :if=/var/spool/lpd/lp/filter:


##PRINTTOOL3##  LOCAL uniprint NAxNA letter {} U_EpsonStylusColor stcany 1
lp:\
        :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
        :mx#0:\
        :sh:\
        :lp=/dev/lp0:\
        :if=/var/spool/lpd/lp/filter:


I don't see anything obviously wrong with the LOCAL entry but the SMB entry
looks suspicious (/dev/null???)

I probably should have tried printerdrake instead, since this is a Mandrake
system (8.0, by the way.) Running printerdrake gives these strange messages
when I try to edit the local printer:

[root@nakota /etc]# everything already installed
parport_pc: Device or resource busy
rmmod: module parport_probe is not loaded
parport: Device or resource busy
modprobe: Can't locate module parport_probe
rmmod: module parport_probe is not loaded
no entries

So I suppose I probably need to restart or reload something, but not being a
Linux admin expert, I fear I'll hose things up worse. I did try manually
removing the network printer from the printcap file, but that didn't help, so
I put the printtool-edited file back.
Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Vaughn