[vox-tech] Touble with Printer Set-up (long)

[Peter Jay Salzman]

jim,

i have to admit, i don't know as much about printers as i ought to.  all
the ones i've set up just seem "to work" as long as the parallel port
"works".   a couple of comments:

> 9.)  At this point they claim you can just use printtool or printconf,
> or use the CUPS web-based interface to finish things up.  Neither
> printtool nor printconf are recognized commands now on my machine, so
> that won't work.  I suspect it's because of step 3.) above.

absolutely.  you rpm -e'd them.  that removes the rpm from your system.
you're not exactly a newbie; sometimes a ridiculously hard problem can
make us feel like newbies tho.


here's the deal.  i can't help you.  i don't use cups, i don't like
cups, i never learned cups.  i find it hard to believe that cups would
install a "driver" to your system.  at least anything that *i* would
call a driver.   you should still be able to do some basic diagnostic
stuff with your system.

1. is your parallel port working?

1a.  fresh installs of redhat and mandrake have everything but the
kitchen sink insmoded as a driver.   do dmesg | less and look for
anything that says "parport".  look to see if the message is more along
the lines of "parport.o loaded hunky dory" or "parport.o blew chunks".


1b. do lsmod.  look for something that says parport.

1c. here's the final test.   create a small text file that says "hello
world" and name it testfile.

cat testfile > /dev/lp0

the light on your printer *should* blink at the very least.  in the best
case, your printer will print "hello world".   if this test works, then
your parallel port is DEFINITELY ok.



at this point, we know whether the parallel port is healthy or not.  the
next part is to determine whether spooling is working.


let me know how this part fares and we'll move to the next part.


someone please put me out of my misery and do a talk about cups and
lprng at lugod!!

pete