SOLVED: Re: [PLUG] CUPS, /dev/lp0 and nothing.

Jeme A Brelin jeme at brelin.net
Sat Jan 11 15:28:01 UTC 2003


I must say that I wrote my first message (with very little data) out of
frustration and laziness.  I'd worked on this machine last night when I
was really sleepy and then got around to it this afternoon assuming it was
a hardware problem.

Well, it was nothing of the sort.

After turning the logging up, I saw log entries that led me to believe
there was a ghostscript error.  But after trying the gs-alladin package
and getting the same result, I went back to GNU ghostscript and looked
into other possibilities.  I ran the foomatic-gswrapper line as given in
the logs from the command-line (modified to read the testprint.ps directly
instead of from stdin) and got no errors.  I then tried piping that out
put to pnm2ppa as is shown in the logfile, but when I typed pnm2<tab>, I
got a beep for my trouble.  Heh.

Turns out, I didn't even have the pnm2ppa package installed.  Pfft.  
Also, the package doesn't really seem to configure itself, so I had to
create a symlink from /etc/ppa/pnm2ppa.conf.hp820 to /etc/pnm2ppa.conf.  
No big deal.

All works seemingly flawlessly now.

What follows is what I was writing when I decided to take Rob's excellent
(and simple) advice to crank up the logging and watch the output.

On 11 Jan 2003, AthlonRob wrote:
> On Sat, 2003-01-11 at 13:18, Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> > I hate printers.
> Me too.

Good to know I'm not alone.  Stupid technology all around.

> > I've got a system here with CUPS, foomatic, and both parport and
> > parportPC modules installed and seemingly properly configured.
> > 
> > However, nothing seems to happen when you print anything and I can't
> > find a log of what should have happened.
> 
> Well, it sounds to me like things probably aren't properly configured.  

Yeah, yeah yeah.

I figure it's not the cable because of this:

jbrelin at cyclops:~$ dmesg|grep parport
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE,EPP]
parport0: irq 7 detected
parport0: Printer, HEWLETT-PACKARD DESKJET 820C
lp0: using parport0 (polling).

I guess if the parport driver can tell me what kind of printer it is, then
the cable is doing its job.

> When you hit the CUPS web interface, can you print a test page to the
> printer?

No.

> Ten go in to your cups config file and increase the logging level.  
> You'll get a shitload of debug info sent out to your logs.  Dig
> through that and the answer may be there.

That's very good advice.  But the logs appear to only be for the little
webserver.  I'm not getting any print logs whatsoever.

Is there a foomatic log somewhere?

It ain't listed with this: `locate foo|grep log`.

> Also, I assume, you have hit the info at linuxprinting.org?

Aye.

> > In fact, `cat /etc/motd > /dev/lp0` doesn't give me anything,
> > either.  And, in my experience, that works regardless of your
> > configuration.
> 
> Not with today's new-fangled printers.  More often than not, that
> won't do diddly squat.

Grrr.

> > My current guess is that it's a physical connection problem, but 
> > wouldn't  CUPS tell me something if that were the case?
> 
> Most likely, yes... but that depends on how you have things set up,
> your printer, and what your log files are saying.

Yeah, I figured out it's likely not physical.

> What kind of printer is it, anyway?  I assume you're using Debian...
> did you apt-get cups or build it from source?

This machine is for somebody else, so it's Debian and everything is from
the Debian archive (except Open Office, which is from a separate archive,
but still installed via apt).

> Does debian come with some printer config tool or did you use the web
> interface or the cli interface or what to set up your printer?
> I would suggest using the web interface, it worked well for me.

I've used several methods.  Currently, I'm using a spool I built via the
command line with lpadmin and a PPD file generated by the
linuxprinting.org PPD-O-Matic CGI (after selecting my printer and the
suggested pnm2ppa driver).

I've set up printers with CUPS before and it was usually cake.

J.
-- 
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     Jeme A Brelin
    jeme at brelin.net
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