Re: Linux printing woes

From: Dances With Crows (danSPANceswitTRAPhcrows_at_gmail.com)
Date: 11/07/04 

Date: 7 Nov 2004 22:43:47 GMT

On 7 Nov 2004 12:28:25 -0800, Octessence staggered into the Black Sun
and said:
> I am running Gentoo Linux and I am having trouble with setting up my
> printer "HP Deskjet 710C". I have installed pnm2ppa...
>
> foomatic-configure -s cups -p HP-DeskJet_710C -c
> file:/usr/share/cups/model/HP-DeskJet_710C-pnm2ppa.ppd-n hpdj -d
> pnm2ppa
>
> Use of uninitialized value in substitution (s///) at
> /usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.8.4/Foomatic/DB.pm line 3427.
> lpadmin: add-printer (set device) failed: client-error-not-possible
> Could not set up/change the queue "hpdj"!

The foomatic script is failing somewhere. Not entirely unexpected given
what you report later...

> However when I view the cups info on http://localhost:631/printers

> Description: HP DeskJet 710C
> Device URI: file:/dev/null

This isn't right. /dev/null is totally wrong; it should be pointing at
/dev/lp0 (parallel) or /dev/usb/printer0 (USB).

> I suspect my printer is not configured on /dev/lp0 properly but the
> howto says that I cannot test the printer port using: cat test.txt >
> /dev/lp0 because my printer won't do that.

Gentoo uses devfs. Make sure that /dev/lp0 exists and is a symlink to
/dev/printers/0 . For it to exist, the parport, parport_pc, and lp
modules must be loaded. Make sure you see them when you do an lsmod.

> I have PARPORT_PC compiled into my kernel

? Never compile something directly into the kernel when you can make it
a module. That makes it difficult to do diagnosis. 

-- 
Matt G|There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see
Brainbench MVP for Linux Admin /    mail: TRAP + SPAN don't belong
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