My printer config is hosed

Vaughn Treude plug-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us
Sat, 5 Apr 2003 12:47:37 -0500


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