[PLUG] Help! Can't print my homework

John Jason Jordan johnxj at comcast.net
Tue Jan 21 03:39:23 UTC 2014


I have several laser printers on my home ethernet, and I can print to
all of them except the one I need for the job at hand. 

In the following "printer" means the CUPS setup on my computer. If I
refer to the printer itself I call it the "print device."

Nothing has changed in the printer properties window for this printer,
and I can ping it from the command line (192.168.0.135). But when I try
to print to it I get an error message that it is not connected. The
Xubuntu 13.10 GUI says under Printer State: "Processing - The printer is
in use."  The printer's control panel says it is ready to print. I have
stopped and restarted CUPS, but I still can't get the computer to
recognize that the printer is ready to accept a job. Also, the GUI
normally has a Print Test Page button, and it appears on all my other
printers, but it does not appear for this printer. 

When I try to print from any application now, next to this printer is
the message "the printer is in use." I have duplicated the printer, and
the new printer tries to print a test page once, then immediately says
the printer is in use. The test page never gets to the printer. I also
recreated the printer from scratch, and got the same results. My
current favorite printer uses the PPD file for this printer (Phaser
7400DN), but I have other printers configured for it using the Xerox
driver. If I try to print to this printer from any of these other
printers I get the same results - first it says it is accepting jobs,
then as soon as I send it a job it goes to "the printer is in use" and
the print job never gets to the printer.

From the command line lpstat -a gives me:

Xerox-Phaser-7400DN-PPD3 accepting requests since Mon 20 Jan 2014
06:33:09 PM PST

How can it be that I can ping the printer, but CUPS gets stuck thinking
that the printer is in use? I have spent two hours so far googling,
with no solution in sight. I need some brilliant suggestions.



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