Yet another cups problem (the one program which makes me feel like I do
when running windows - like putting a foot through the computer).

I have a standard printer with a reliable driver (Brother HL5040). It
was working using the parallel port on my old PC. Said PC died, replaced
it with a new one, installed 64bit lenny. Configured cups for printer,
all appears ok (ie. ppd file ok, printer status recognized etc). On
printing anything at all (including the test page) all I get is what
appears to be misinterpreted postscript. One line of gibberish per page,
followed by a page feed. Feels like I've hit a time warp and ended up in
1990.

Any ideas? Logs are quiet. cupsd.conf refers to a
/var/run/cups/printcap, which doesn't exist, but says it will be created
automatically (there's no /etc/printcap)

Have uninstalled and reinstalled cupsys, no change.

Thanks
Graham


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On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 17:02:07 +0100, graham wrote:
> Yet another cups problem (the one program which makes me feel like I do
> when running windows - like putting a foot through the computer).
>
> I have a standard printer with a reliable driver (Brother HL5040). It was
> working using the parallel port on my old PC. Said PC died, replaced it
> with a new one, installed 64bit lenny. Configured cups for printer, all
> appears ok (ie. ppd file ok, printer status recognized etc). On printing
> anything at all (including the test page) all I get is what appears to be
> misinterpreted postscript. One line of gibberish per page, followed by a
> page feed. Feels like I've hit a time warp and ended up in 1990.
>
> Any ideas? Logs are quiet. cupsd.conf refers to a /var/run/cups/printcap,
> which doesn't exist, but says it will be created automatically (there's no
> /etc/printcap)
>
> Have uninstalled and reinstalled cupsys, no change.

Post your /etc/cups/printers.conf please. (Watch out, this file can
contain clear-text passwords if you have configured networked printing.
If this is the case then it is advisable to replace the sensitive data
with generic placeholders before posting.)

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On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 05:02:07PM +0100, graham wrote:
> Yet another cups problem (the one program which makes me feel like I do
> when running windows - like putting a foot through the computer).

So why run cups? Use LPRng and Apsfilter or foomatic print filters.

Doug.



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Florian Kulzer wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 17:02:07 +0100, graham wrote:

>> I have a standard printer with a reliable driver (Brother HL5040). It was
>> working using the parallel port on my old PC. Said PC died, replaced it
>> with a new one, installed 64bit lenny. Configured cups for printer, all
>> appears ok (ie. ppd file ok, printer status recognized etc). On printing
>> anything at all (including the test page) all I get is what appears to be
>> misinterpreted postscript. One line of gibberish per page, followed by a
>> page feed.
>
> Post your /etc/cups/printers.conf please. (Watch out, this file can
> contain clear-text passwords if you have configured networked printing.
> If this is the case then it is advisable to replace the sensitive data
> with generic placeholders before posting.)
>

As follows (auto-generated, I have made no manual changes)

# Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.2.12
# Written by cupsd on 2007-08-06 16:08
<Printer HL-5040>
Info HL-5040
DeviceURI parallel:/dev/lp0
State Idle
StateTime 1186412905
Accepting Yes
Shared Yes
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
OpPolicy default
ErrorPolicy stop-printer
</Printer>

There is a presumably unrelated second problem: I can send the test page
from the server on port 631 ok (though it doesn't actually print
correctly), but if I send it from the gnome printer admin applet, the
job immediately appears as 'stopped' and I am unable to do anything
further till I have removed it.

Thanks
Graham


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Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 05:02:07PM +0100, graham wrote:
>> Yet another cups problem (the one program which makes me feel like I do
>> when running windows - like putting a foot through the computer).
>
> So why run cups? Use LPRng and Apsfilter or foomatic print filters.
>
> Doug.
>

Cos what I'd understood from other threads was that this would mean
swimming against the tide, since cups is now the default for both debian
and gnome, and because I had understood that lprng was no longer
supported. I'm really hoping to spend the minimum of time possible
maintaining printers; they don't interest me much ;-)

Graham


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On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 18:52:56 +0100, graham wrote:
> Florian Kulzer wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 17:02:07 +0100, graham wrote:
>
>>> I have a standard printer with a reliable driver (Brother HL5040). It was
>>> working using the parallel port on my old PC. Said PC died, replaced it
>>> with a new one, installed 64bit lenny. Configured cups for printer, all
>>> appears ok (ie. ppd file ok, printer status recognized etc). On printing
>>> anything at all (including the test page) all I get is what appears to be
>>> misinterpreted postscript. One line of gibberish per page, followed by a
>>> page feed.
>> Post your /etc/cups/printers.conf please. (Watch out, this file can
>> contain clear-text passwords if you have configured networked printing.
>> If this is the case then it is advisable to replace the sensitive data
>> with generic placeholders before posting.)
>
> As follows (auto-generated, I have made no manual changes)
>
> # Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.2.12
> # Written by cupsd on 2007-08-06 16:08
> <Printer HL-5040>
> Info HL-5040
> DeviceURI parallel:/dev/lp0
> State Idle
> StateTime 1186412905
> Accepting Yes
> Shared Yes
> JobSheets none none
> QuotaPeriod 0
> PageLimit 0
> KLimit 0
> OpPolicy default
> ErrorPolicy stop-printer
> </Printer>

That looks pretty OK to me. There are a few things to check now (post
the results here):

- What are the permissions of /dev/lp0? ("ls -l /dev/lp0") Most likely
they will be correct since you are allowed to access the printer, but
it cannot hurt to check. Also, are you a member of the lp and lpadmin
groups?

- Is the printer reported correctly if you run
/usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel
?

- Has the ppd file been copied to /etc/cups/ppd/HL-5040.ppd? The owner
should be cupsys, group lp and the permissions should be 0644. You can
check if the file corresponds to the correct driver with:
grep '^*NickName:' /etc/cups/ppd/HL-5040.ppd

- The foomatic-filters-ppds package has four different ppd files for the
Brother HL-5040. Did you try them all?

> There is a presumably unrelated second problem: I can send the test page
> from the server on port 631 ok (though it doesn't actually print
> correctly), but if I send it from the gnome printer admin applet, the job
> immediately appears as 'stopped' and I am unable to do anything further
> till I have removed it.

I don't know the Gnome printing utilities, so I cannot here. In any
case, we first need to get the test page working when triggered from the
CUPS frontend.

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On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 18:52:56 +0100, graham wrote:
> Florian Kulzer wrote:
>> On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 17:02:07 +0100, graham wrote:
>
>>> I have a standard printer with a reliable driver (Brother HL5040). It was
>>> working using the parallel port on my old PC. Said PC died, replaced it
>>> with a new one, installed 64bit lenny. Configured cups for printer, all
>>> appears ok (ie. ppd file ok, printer status recognized etc). On printing
>>> anything at all (including the test page) all I get is what appears to be
>>> misinterpreted postscript. One line of gibberish per page, followed by a
>>> page feed.
>> Post your /etc/cups/printers.conf please. (Watch out, this file can
>> contain clear-text passwords if you have configured networked printing.
>> If this is the case then it is advisable to replace the sensitive data
>> with generic placeholders before posting.)
>
> As follows (auto-generated, I have made no manual changes)
>
> # Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.2.12
> # Written by cupsd on 2007-08-06 16:08
> <Printer HL-5040>
> Info HL-5040
> DeviceURI parallel:/dev/lp0
> State Idle
> StateTime 1186412905
> Accepting Yes
> Shared Yes
> JobSheets none none
> QuotaPeriod 0
> PageLimit 0
> KLimit 0
> OpPolicy default
> ErrorPolicy stop-printer
> </Printer>

That looks pretty OK to me. There are a few things to check now (post
the results here):

- What are the permissions of /dev/lp0? ("ls -l /dev/lp0") Most likely
they will be correct since you are allowed to access the printer, but
it cannot hurt to check. Also, are you a member of the lp and lpadmin
groups?

- Is the printer reported correctly if you run
/usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel
?

- Has the ppd file been copied to /etc/cups/ppd/HL-5040.ppd? The owner
should be cupsys, group lp and the permissions should be 0644. You can
check if the file corresponds to the correct driver with:
grep '^*NickName:' /etc/cups/ppd/HL-5040.ppd

- The foomatic-filters-ppds package has four different ppd files for the
Brother HL-5040. Did you try them all?

> There is a presumably unrelated second problem: I can send the test page
> from the server on port 631 ok (though it doesn't actually print
> correctly), but if I send it from the gnome printer admin applet, the job
> immediately appears as 'stopped' and I am unable to do anything further
> till I have removed it.

I don't know the Gnome printing utilities, so I cannot here. In any
case, we first need to get the test page working when triggered from the
CUPS frontend.

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Florian |


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On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 07:14:25PM +0100, graham wrote:
> Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> >On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 05:02:07PM +0100, graham wrote:
> >>Yet another cups problem (the one program which makes me feel like I do
> >>when running windows - like putting a foot through the computer).
> >
> >So why run cups? Use LPRng and Apsfilter or foomatic print filters.
> >
>
> Cos what I'd understood from other threads was that this would mean
> swimming against the tide, since cups is now the default for both debian
> and gnome, and because I had understood that lprng was no longer
> supported. I'm really hoping to spend the minimum of time possible
> maintaining printers; they don't interest me much ;-)
>

LPRng does look a little long-in-the-tooth. The web page is dated '5
Oct 2004' for the same version as debian ships.

On the other hand, good'ol lpr is up-to-date (still the default,
constantly maintaind, on Net- and OpenBSD), sourced from OpenBSD. The
bug reports are rather silly, such as "Installing LPR over LPRng doesn't
work" (of course not, command file names), "lpr fails to modprobe the
paralell port" (of course not, that's your job), etc.

This is, in fact, what I use. Lpr with apsfilter. Simple to setup,
well documented. It works.

Doug.


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On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 07:14:25PM +0100, graham wrote:
> Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> >On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 05:02:07PM +0100, graham wrote:
> >>Yet another cups problem (the one program which makes me feel like I do
> >>when running windows - like putting a foot through the computer).
> >
> >So why run cups? Use LPRng and Apsfilter or foomatic print filters.
> >
>
> Cos what I'd understood from other threads was that this would mean
> swimming against the tide, since cups is now the default for both debian
> and gnome, and because I had understood that lprng was no longer
> supported. I'm really hoping to spend the minimum of time possible
> maintaining printers; they don't interest me much ;-)
>

LPRng does look a little long-in-the-tooth. The web page is dated '5
Oct 2004' for the same version as debian ships.

On the other hand, good'ol lpr is up-to-date (still the default,
constantly maintaind, on Net- and OpenBSD), sourced from OpenBSD. The
bug reports are rather silly, such as "Installing LPR over LPRng doesn't
work" (of course not, command file names), "lpr fails to modprobe the
paralell port" (of course not, that's your job), etc.

This is, in fact, what I use. Lpr with apsfilter. Simple to setup,
well documented. It works.

Doug.


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Florian Kulzer wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 18:52:56 +0100, graham wrote:
>> Florian Kulzer wrote:
>>> On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 17:02:07 +0100, graham wrote:
>>>> I have a standard printer with a reliable driver (Brother HL5040). It was
>>>> working using the parallel port on my old PC. Said PC died, replaced it
>>>> with a new one, installed 64bit lenny. Configured cups for printer, all
>>>> appears ok (ie. ppd file ok, printer status recognized etc). On printing
>>>> anything at all (including the test page) all I get is what appears to be
>>>> misinterpreted postscript. One line of gibberish per page, followed by a
>>>> page feed.
>>> Post your /etc/cups/printers.conf please. (Watch out, this file can

<snip>
>
> That looks pretty OK to me. There are a few things to check now (post
> the results here):
>
> - What are the permissions of /dev/lp0? ("ls -l /dev/lp0") Most likely
> they will be correct since you are allowed to access the printer, but
> it cannot hurt to check.

crw-rw---- 1 root lp 6, 0 2007-08-06 21:39 /dev/lp0

> Also, are you a member of the lp and lpadmin groups?

I was in lp, not lpadmin. Added myself to lpadmin; no change


> - Is the printer reported correctly if you run
> /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel
> ?

No:

graham@dogmatix:~$ /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel
direct parallel:/dev/lp0 "Unknown" "LPT #1"


>
> - Has the ppd file been copied to /etc/cups/ppd/HL-5040.ppd?

Yes

> The owner should be cupsys, group lp and the permissions should be 0644.

The owner was root.root. Changed this to cupsys.lp and the test page
printed ok from the CUPS frontend (tested this once only, since I
assumed it was now ok).

However, printing from anything else still gave the same result as
before. Tried rebooting (a la windows); the test page no longer prints
from the CUPS frontend - the original problem returned.

Suspecting the permissions (everything else in the directory was also
root.root or root.lp), I did

chown -R cupsys.lp /etc/cups

but the problem stayed unchanged

Current state:

graham@dogmatix:~$ ls -al /etc/cups/ppd
total 24
drwxr-xr-x 2 cupsys lp 4096 2007-08-06 16:08 .
drwxr-sr-t 5 cupsys lp 4096 2007-08-06 16:08 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 cupsys lp 12517 2007-08-06 16:08 HL-5040.ppd


> You can
> check if the file corresponds to the correct driver with:
> grep '^*NickName:' /etc/cups/ppd/HL-5040.ppd
>

Yes thats fine.

*NickName: "Brother HL-5040 Foomatic/hl1250 (recommended)"


> - The foomatic-filters-ppds package has four different ppd files for the
> Brother HL-5040. Did you try them all?

No, but I don't believe that's the issue. This one has always worked
fine for me before (several different systesm, none of which is
unfortunately available for comparison).

Thanks for the

Graham


>
>> There is a presumably unrelated second problem: I can send the test page
>> from the server on port 631 ok (though it doesn't actually print
>> correctly), but if I send it from the gnome printer admin applet, the job
>> immediately appears as 'stopped' and I am unable to do anything further
>> till I have removed it.
>
> I don't know the Gnome printing utilities, so I cannot here. In any
> case, we first need to get the test page working when triggered from the
> CUPS frontend.
>


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Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:

> This is, in fact, what I use. Lpr with apsfilter. Simple to setup,
> well documented. It works.

Since Florian Kulzer is being kind enough to attempt remote diagnosis,
I'll see how that goes first (also because at some later point I'd like
this to be a samba print server). If that fails, then I shall try to
dredge up my memories of the 90s and getting the filter chain working
again.. Thanks for letting me know it's still possible!

Graham

>
> Doug.
>
>


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graham <graham@theseamans.net>:
> Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 05:02:07PM +0100, graham wrote:
> >> Yet another cups problem (the one program which makes me feel like I do
> >> when running windows - like putting a foot through the computer).
> >
> > So why run cups? Use LPRng and Apsfilter or foomatic print filters.
>
> Cos what I'd understood from other threads was that this would mean
> swimming against the tide, since cups is now the default for both debian

Yes, it is swimming against the tide. Big deal, && fsck 'em.

CUPS has made a mess of *nix printing. All you need to do to enable
*nix printing is find your printer's driver, install lpr(ng), then
hack /etc/printcap (which is pretty damned simple):

lp0|To Your Left: \
:lp=/dev/lp0: \
:force_localhost: \
:if=/usr/bin/foomatic-rip: \
:ppd=/usr/local/ppd/Epson-Stylus_Photo_870-Stp870p.upp.ppd: \
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp: \
:mx#0:sh:

It just works. CUPS is *way* unnecessary. The biggest problem with
*nix printing is trying to figure out how to install something without
dragging in CUPS too. :-P Even if you have lpr(ng) installed, CUPS
chooses to replace them, and tends to get away with it! Be vigilant.


--
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(*) http://blinkynet.net/comp/uip5.html Linux Counter #80292
- - http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html Please, don't Cc: me.


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On 07 Aug 2007, s. keeling wrote:
> graham <graham@theseamans.net>:
> > Douglas Allan Tutty wrote:
> > > On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 05:02:07PM +0100, graham wrote:
> > >> Yet another cups problem (the one program which makes me feel like I do
> > >> when running windows - like putting a foot through the computer).
> > >
> > > So why run cups? Use LPRng and Apsfilter or foomatic print filters.
> >
> > Cos what I'd understood from other threads was that this would mean
> > swimming against the tide, since cups is now the default for both debian
>
> Yes, it is swimming against the tide. Big deal, && fsck 'em.
>
> CUPS has made a mess of *nix printing. All you need to do to enable
> *nix printing is find your printer's driver, install lpr(ng), then
> hack /etc/printcap (which is pretty damned simple):
>
> lp0|To Your Left: \
> :lp=/dev/lp0: \
> :force_localhost: \
> :if=/usr/bin/foomatic-rip: \
> :ppd=/usr/local/ppd/Epson-Stylus_Photo_870-Stp870p.upp.ppd: \
> :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp: \
> :mx#0:sh:
>
> It just works. CUPS is *way* unnecessary. The biggest problem with
> *nix printing is trying to figure out how to install something without
> dragging in CUPS too. :-P Even if you have lpr(ng) installed, CUPS
> chooses to replace them, and tends to get away with it! Be vigilant.
>

I ditched Cups a couple of years ago in favour of lpr + magicfilter. I
never have any problems, including network printing. Dead easy to set
up.

Anthony


--
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Microsoft-free zone - Using Linux Gnu-Debian
http://www.acampbell.org.uk (blog, book reviews,
on-line books and sceptical articles)


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On Mon, Aug 06, 2007 at 22:05:53 +0100, graham wrote:
> Florian Kulzer wrote:

[...]

>> - Is the printer reported correctly if you run
>> /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel
>> ?
>
> No:
>
> graham@dogmatix:~$ /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel
> direct parallel:/dev/lp0 "Unknown" "LPT #1"

Maybe this just means that the printer does not identify itself. (Not
all printers do this, as far as I know.)

>> - Has the ppd file been copied to /etc/cups/ppd/HL-5040.ppd?
>
> Yes
>
>> The owner should be cupsys, group lp and the permissions should be 0644.
>
> The owner was root.root. Changed this to cupsys.lp and the test page
> printed ok from the CUPS frontend (tested this once only, since I assumed
> it was now ok).
>
> However, printing from anything else still gave the same result as before.
> Tried rebooting (a la windows); the test page no longer prints from the
> CUPS frontend - the original problem returned.
>
> Suspecting the permissions (everything else in the directory was also
> root.root or root.lp), I did
>
> chown -R cupsys.lp /etc/cups
>
> but the problem stayed unchanged
>
> Current state:
>
> graham@dogmatix:~$ ls -al /etc/cups/ppd
> total 24
> drwxr-xr-x 2 cupsys lp 4096 2007-08-06 16:08 .
> drwxr-sr-t 5 cupsys lp 4096 2007-08-06 16:08 ..
> -rw-r--r-- 1 cupsys lp 12517 2007-08-06 16:08 HL-5040.ppd

Well, Sid just had a cupsys upgrade and now the ownership of my
/etc/cups/ppd/* files is actually root:lp. The important thing seems to be
that the lp group can read the files. My /etc/cups/ directory looks like
this now:

$ ls -al /etc/cups/
total 88
drwxr-xr-x 5 root lp 4096 2007-08-07 09:26 .
drwxr-xr-x 135 root root 12288 2007-08-07 09:29 ..
-rw------- 1 root lp 83 2007-07-27 15:52 classes.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1215 2006-11-03 01:57 command.types
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 8818 2007-05-24 11:51 cups-pdf.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2959 2007-06-09 16:47 cupsd.conf
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 2007-02-02 14:50 interfaces
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4644 2007-05-14 10:57 mime.convs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6289 2007-07-14 15:47 mime.types
drwxr-xr-x 2 root lp 4096 2007-07-05 10:58 ppd
-rw------- 1 root lp 1006 2007-07-27 15:52 printers.conf
-rw------- 1 root lp 999 2007-07-05 10:58 printers.conf.O
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 946 2006-09-29 14:58 pstoraster.convs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 242 2007-03-18 13:01 raw.convs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 213 2007-03-18 13:01 raw.types
drwx------ 2 root lp 4096 2007-08-07 09:26 ssl

I just checked after the upgrade and printing still seems to work for
me.

>> You can
>> check if the file corresponds to the correct driver with:
>> grep '^*NickName:' /etc/cups/ppd/HL-5040.ppd
>
> Yes thats fine.
>
> *NickName: "Brother HL-5040 Foomatic/hl1250 (recommended)"

That certainly seems to be the correct driver.

>> - The foomatic-filters-ppds package has four different ppd files for the
>> Brother HL-5040. Did you try them all?
>
> No, but I don't believe that's the issue. This one has always worked fine
> for me before (several different systesm, none of which is unfortunately
> available for comparison).

The changelog of the newest Sid version of cupsys gives me the
impression that there were some problems with the first Debian packages
of the new upstream cups release (version 1.2.12-1, in Lenny right now).
Maybe your problem ist just a case of installing at the wrong time. You
could try if you can install version 1.2.12-2 of cupsys, cupsys-common,
cupsys-client, and libcupsys2 (from Sid). Using "dpkg --purge
--force-depends" should allow you to temporarily purge the old packages
without removing anything else that depends on cups. This should be safe
if you reinstall the new (or old) packages again immediately. (Famous
last words...)

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Florian Kulzer wrote:

>
> The changelog of the newest Sid version of cupsys gives me the
> impression that there were some problems with the first Debian packages
> of the new upstream cups release (version 1.2.12-1, in Lenny right now).
> Maybe your problem ist just a case of installing at the wrong time. You
> could try if you can install version 1.2.12-2 of cupsys, cupsys-common,
> cupsys-client, and libcupsys2 (from Sid). Using "dpkg --purge
> --force-depends" should allow you to temporarily purge the old packages
> without removing anything else that depends on cups. This should be safe
> if you reinstall the new (or old) packages again immediately. (Famous
> last words...)
>

I'm starting to think it may be a kernel-related problem somehow. I
removed cups completely and installed lprng and the foomatic filter. At
first this gave me exactly the same problem as I had had with cups:
using foomatic-gui to print a test page produces single lines of
gibberish per page.

I then rebooted again. Now I am unable to get a test page to produce
anything at all. When I do lpq -P lp0 I get:

graham@dogmatix:~$ lpq -Plp0
Printer: lp0@dogmatix 'HL5040'
Queue: 1 printable job
Server: pid 3708 active
Unspooler: pid 3709 active
Status: cannot open '/dev/lp0' - 'No such file or directory', attempt
2, sleeping 20 at 12:03:42.777
Rank Owner/ID Pr/Class Job Files Size Time
active root@dogmatix+706 A 706 (STDIN) 27719 12:03:32


There is no /dev/lp0. dmesg says:

pnp: the driver 'parport_pc' has been registered
pnp: match found with the PnP device '00:0c' and the driver 'parport_pc'
parport: PnPBIOS parport detected.
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778), irq 7, dma 3
[PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,EPP,ECP ,DMA]
parport0: Printer, Brother HL-5040 series

There are no further references to lp0 or parport0

Googling gives me a few vaguely related symptoms; following one of these
I found the suggestion to modprobe ppdev. My kern.log then showed:

Aug 7 11:51:56 dogmatix kernel: ppdev: user-space parallel port driver

but the symptoms didn't change.

My printcap is:

lp0|HL5040: \
:lp=/dev/lp0: \
:force_localhost: \
:if=/usr/bin/foomatic-rip: \
:ppd=/usr/local/ppd/Brother-HL-5040-hl1250.ppd: \
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp: \
:mx#0:sh:


Graham




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On Tue, Aug 07, 2007 at 12:06:25 +0100, graham wrote:
> Florian Kulzer wrote:
>
>> The changelog of the newest Sid version of cupsys gives me the
>> impression that there were some problems with the first Debian packages
>> of the new upstream cups release (version 1.2.12-1, in Lenny right now).
>> Maybe your problem ist just a case of installing at the wrong time. You
>> could try if you can install version 1.2.12-2 of cupsys, cupsys-common,
>> cupsys-client, and libcupsys2 (from Sid). Using "dpkg --purge
>> --force-depends" should allow you to temporarily purge the old packages
>> without removing anything else that depends on cups. This should be safe
>> if you reinstall the new (or old) packages again immediately. (Famous
>> last words...)
>
> I'm starting to think it may be a kernel-related problem somehow. I removed
> cups completely and installed lprng and the foomatic filter. At first this
> gave me exactly the same problem as I had had with cups: using foomatic-gui
> to print a test page produces single lines of gibberish per page.

Then it might be a problem with foomatic-gui. I cannot say anything more
specific since I have never used foomatic-gui.

> I then rebooted again. Now I am unable to get a test page to produce
> anything at all. When I do lpq -P lp0 I get:
>
> graham@dogmatix:~$ lpq -Plp0
> Printer: lp0@dogmatix 'HL5040'
> Queue: 1 printable job
> Server: pid 3708 active
> Unspooler: pid 3709 active
> Status: cannot open '/dev/lp0' - 'No such file or directory', attempt 2,

That should be fixable by putting the "lp" module in /etc/modules.

> sleeping 20 at 12:03:42.777
> Rank Owner/ID Pr/Class Job Files Size Time
> active root@dogmatix+706 A 706 (STDIN) 27719 12:03:32
>
>
> There is no /dev/lp0. dmesg says:
>
> pnp: the driver 'parport_pc' has been registered
> pnp: match found with the PnP device '00:0c' and the driver 'parport_pc'
> parport: PnPBIOS parport detected.
> parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778), irq 7, dma 3
> [PCSPP,TRISTATE,COMPAT,EPP,ECP ,DMA]
> parport0: Printer, Brother HL-5040 series
>
> There are no further references to lp0 or parport0
>
> Googling gives me a few vaguely related symptoms; following one of these I
> found the suggestion to modprobe ppdev. My kern.log then showed:
>
> Aug 7 11:51:56 dogmatix kernel: ppdev: user-space parallel port driver

As far as I know, you need the following modules: parport, parport_pc, lp

> but the symptoms didn't change.
>
> My printcap is:
>
> lp0|HL5040: \
> :lp=/dev/lp0: \
> :force_localhost: \
> :if=/usr/bin/foomatic-rip: \
> :ppd=/usr/local/ppd/Brother-HL-5040-hl1250.ppd: \
> :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp: \
> :mx#0:sh:

It seems to me that your CUPS problem was fixed at some point (you could
print the test page, right?) and then you got bitten by the problem of
the missing lp module after you rebooted. In addition there might be
something wrong with footmatic-gui.

--
Regards, | http://users.icfo.es/Florian.Kulzer
Florian |


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Florian Kulzer wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 07, 2007 at 12:06:25 +0100, graham wrote:
>> Florian Kulzer wrote:
>>

> That should be fixable by putting the "lp" module in /etc/modules.

You were right. I'd just assumed that was there by default.

After installing the lp module, I found that lprng behaved in exactly
the same way as cups. Having established that the problem is not with
cups but with the output filters in some way, I have now uninstalled
lprng and returned to cups.

> It seems to me that your CUPS problem was fixed at some point (you could
> print the test page, right?)

It printed the test page correctly once, apparently randomly. After the
next boot it stopped doing so, but this was before the lp module problem
which only appeared after I removed cups and changed to lprng..


I can't afford to spend more time on this for now. I will have to find
some other way to print (sneakernet to my wife's windows machine, I
expect :-(

Thanks for all your

Graham


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I have had what seems to be the same printer problem you describe, ever
since I installed Debian Etch in February 2007 on my new computer with
an amd64 type processor. My printer is an HP Deskpro 500, and the
computer has a Asus p5b mainboard with Intel E6300 processor.

>From time to time I have looked into this problem and finally today
solved it after reading this report of Bug #38805 in Debian.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/debian/+bug/38805

I checked my bios setup and under Parellel Port Mode found four choices.
Normal, Bi-directional, EPP and ECP. I had the problem with it set at
ECP but when I choose Normal, the printer works.

Hope this fixes your problem as well,

Bob C



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