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