Re: [tlug] Printer Not Responding

[Scott Robbins <scottro@example.com>]

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On Thu, Apr 13, 2006 at 12:30:38PM +0900, Dave M G wrote:
> TLUG,
> 

Hi Dave,

Ok, first you have to learn how to give us better information.  A lot of
this will sound like scolding.  Deal with it.  :)  Seriously, don't
worry it's part of learning. 


> I went and completely re-installed CUPS in hopes of getting a fresh 
> start, which changed some of the error output. I also posted this 
> information to the CUPS mailing list, although it seems actually that 
> there's no real traffic there. A few people seeking help and almost no 
> one answering.
> 

See, we were actually getting somewhere last time--however, when it says
something about line 30 of the cupsd.conf, you should probably have let
us know what was at line 30.  



> After re-installing CUPS, I installed the printer using the CUPS 
> interface. I used the custom PPD file created following the instructions 
> of the site. 

What site?  Of course, the CUPS docs are simply brilliant.  They're so
erudite that many people look at them in amazement.  Err, not
necessarily positive amazement.  One would think, for instance, that
since the man page for lpadmin doesn't bother giving the syntax, and,
IIRC doesn't even bother telling you to read the sam.html that is
(hopefully) included in the docs, that at least the sam would give the
syntax for USB, which is probably the most popular home printer
connector these days.  

The printer was connected to my USB port and turned on when 
> I installed it.

> 
> When I click to print a test page, the printer does not respond in any way.
> 
> 
> dpkg-reconfigure cupsys
> (I did this and went with the default options)
> 
> dave@example.com:~$ tail /var/log/cups/error_log
> E [13/Apr/2006:01:04:29 +0900] [Job 2] Unable to open USB port device 
> file: No such file or directory


Hrrm, is the USB device showing in /dev?   (Not sure what it would be in
Linux, and even less what it shows as in Ubuntu--in FreeBSD it's
/dev/usb, /dev/usb0, /usb1 etc

> E [13/Apr/2006:01:04:36 +0900] Purge-Jobs: Unauthorized
> E [13/Apr/2006:01:04:39 +0900] Resume-Printer: Unauthorized
> 
> dave@example.com:~$ lpadmin -p Canon -v /dev/usblp0

usually, the syntax is lpadmin -p Canon -E -v whatever:
/whatever/whatever.  I'm not sure about USB devices (see rant above) but
everything else has something like socket://whatever, parallel:/whatever
and the like--that is, a prefix with a colon.  


The permission denied thing is another issue.  In most systems with
which I've worked, cups requires root privilege, and actually, the
lpadmin command usually gives me an error even with sudo.   

I remember having trouble getting cups to work with one of those
(Ubuntu, or something similar) distros that doesn't allow a root
password. 

> lpadmin: File device URIs have been disabled! To enable, see the 
> FileDevice directive in "/etc/cups/cupsd.conf".

Not even sure what FileDevice would have to do with this--judging from
the comments, it seems as if they have to do with adding new printers. 


> (I attempted to insert a FileDevice directive in cupsd.conf prior to 
> re-installing CUPS. Other than removing this error, it had no effect on 
> the printer)
> 
> #   scheduler.  See "man cupsd.conf" for a complete description of this
> #   file.
> #


Yeah, I'm sure it's as useful as man(8) lpadmin.  Gives the options but
doesn't bother explaining them.  

Even ueber guru Eric Raymond was disgusted with CUPS. 

(Although, in fairness, using it with JetDirects at work, it pretty much
works out of the box, but I don't ask much of it.  I use the builtin
laserjet driver and let the MS boxen do the work by adding use client
driver = yes in smb.conf.  Whether it's because of the vendors putting
more work into Windows drivers--which makes sense from their point of
view, since that is most of the market--or simply that MS does a better
job, I don't know.  At any rate, at work, CUPS is simply on the server
to server the MS clients.)

I'm not sure where to point you next.  If you have a parallel cable, you
might try that. and see if the results are different. 

> # Restrict access to the server...
> <Location />
>  Order allow,deny
>  Allow localhost
> </Location>
> 

Again, you might try Allow All for a start to see if that makes any
difference. 


- -- 

Scott Robbins

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Xander: It's time for me to act like a man... and hide. 
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