[PLUG] Red Hat 7.1 hijacked my printer...

[briand at aracnet.com]

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  Stuart> $ lpq says there are no print jobs.  Is there some magical
  Stuart> reset switch inside the printer somewhere, or is it time to
  Stuart> buy a real printer?

No it's time to rant about printing under linux.

You have a spool file somewhere.  And everytime lpd runs it sees that
spool file and starts printing.  Since it's printing from the middle
of the job, you get garbage.  The fact that lpq says it's not there is
meaningless.  I have seen the same thing, i.e. jobs which continued to
print after lpq says they don't exist.  In the worst case I have to
kill lpd AND unload the printer module to get things back to normal.

The question is how to figure out where lpd is getting the file from.

You might try lsof.

I would set up the printer so that it runs out of paper after the
first sheet.  Then use lsof or similar to figure out what file is
being printed.  Get rid of that file and you should be OK.

I guess it is possible that it's your printer.  In that case get out
your manual, leave the printer disconnected from computer, and use the
"self-test" sequence to make sure the printer is doing something
reasonable.

Brian