Mandrake 10 - printer problems

[sneakysnake]

Hello,

I was using Mandrake 9.2 with no problems printing. But I am having problems with 10. I'm using a HP Deskjet 842c on a parallel printer port.

With mandrake 10 - both drakconf and cups on http://localhost:631 show my hp deskjet with status =
Description:
Location: hp deskjet842c
Printer State: idle, accepting jobs.
"Ready to print."
Device URI: parallel:/dev/lp0

The problem accurs when I try to print any job. Nothing happens, the print job is sent to que but nothing actually gets sent to the printer. The error log for cups shows the following.

E [19/Mar/2004:20:42:39 -0800] PID 7662 stopped with status 1!
I [19/Mar/2004:20:42:39 -0800] Hint: Try setting the LogLevel to "debug" to find out more.
I [19/Mar/2004:20:42:41 -0800] Started "/usr/lib/cups/cgi-bin/printers.cgi" (pid=7665)


I'm really stuck here and can't seem to get anywhere with this printer and the wife is yelling at me
:(

Any ideas on where to start or help would be great.

[bwkaz]

Based on that log, see if you can find a LogLevel setting in some config file that you could set to "debug" to try to isolate the issue.

Otherwise, do you have Ghostscript installed for CUPS to use? If so, try printing something to a .ps file, and then invoke Ghostscript directly to send it to your printer, like so (example for the LaserJet 1100, which uses PCL4):

gs -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=ljet4 -sOutputFile=/dev/lp0 /path/to/your/postscript/file.ps

If the printer prints, then it's a problem somewhere inside CUPS. If the printer still sits there and does nothing, then it might be similar to a problem I recently had. I fixed my issue by reading through the last section of Documentation/parport.txt in the kernel source tree -- it describes a bunch of steps to go through to try to isolate the problematic code path. The code path that was giving me problems was the "protocol in hardware" one, so I disabled CONFIG_PARPORT_PC_FIFO and recompiled the kernel module.

[sneakysnake]

I did as you stated on this line to see if I could print directly and I did get an error on the libgimpprint.so.1. I'll see if I can find anything on that.

# gs -dSAFER -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=Printer -sOutputFile=/dev/lp0 /home/david/print.ps
gs: error while loading shared libraries: libgimpprint.so.1: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[root@alice cups]# locate libgimpprint.so.1


I up'd the logging for the cups and the following is the output.

d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] CONTENT_TYPE = application/ipp
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] ReadClient() 5 con->data_encoding = length, con->
data_remaining = 128, con->file = 0
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] ProcessIPPRequest(0x403bc008[5]): operation_id =
000a
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] get_jobs(0x403bc008[5], ipp://localhost/printers/
Printer)
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] get_jobs: job->id = 8
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] get_jobs: job->id = 9
D [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] ProcessIPPRequest: 5 status_code=0
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] ProcessIPPRequest: Adding fd 5 to OutputSet...
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] WriteClient: Removing fd 5 from OutputSet...
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] ReadClient() 5, used=0
D [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] CloseClient() 5
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] CloseClient: Removing fd 5 from InputSet and Outp
utSet...
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] ReadClient() 7, used=0
D [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] CloseClient() 7
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:32 -0800] CloseClient: Removing fd 7 from InputSet and Outp
utSet...
d [19/Mar/2004:13:51:58 -0800] SendBrowseList: (107 bytes to "eth0") 900e 3 ipp://192.168.1.104/printers/printer "hp deskjet842c" "" "HP DeskJet 840C - CUPS+Gimp-Print v4.2.6"
D [19/Mar/2004:13:51:58 -0800] UpdateCUPSBrowse: Refused 107 bytes from 192.168.1.104
d [19/Mar/2004:13:52:29 -0800] SendBrowseList: (107 bytes to "eth0") 900e 3 ipp://192.168.1.104/printers/printer "hp deskjet842c" "" "HP DeskJet 840C - CUPS+Gimp-Print v4.2.6"
D [19/Mar/2004:13:52:29 -0800] UpdateCUPSBrowse: Refused 107 bytes from 192.168.1.104

[sneakysnake]

bwkaz - that did the trick!

I don't know why but for some reason I didn't have the libgimpprint installed. I simply installed the the rpm and Bam! I was good to go. Thanks for the help and that command line came in very very handy.

Now I can stop complaining about CUPS and start working with it.

[bwkaz]

If you do ever try to use that gs command for actual printing, you might want to change the -sDEVICE argument. "Printer" isn't a valid Ghostscript device. :D

To see what devices are valid, do a gs -h, as that will list them. I kinda figured you'd know which one your printer was because of CUPS, but maybe it doesn't tell you. I think you can find out by going to linuxprinting.org though.