[cups.general] cups on Brother MFC9880 - intermittent failure

[Robert S]

I don't know whether this is a CUPS, a Linux or a hardware problem.  I'll 
start here.  If you think this isn't a cups problem, please suggest an
alternative newsgroup that I could post this to.

I am running a Brother MFC9660 printer connected (by USB) to a Linux box 
running CUPS 1.1.14-5woody10, samba-2.2.3a-14.1 and debian woody.  Over the 
weekend I got some strange messages (see end of message).  All has been 
working wrll for about 3 weeks althought we have had a few intermittent 
problems in the past.  When the secretaries came in on Monday morning the 
printer was spewing out reams of paper containing gobbledegook.  Nobody had 
been in the office over the weekend.  All of the printing is done by Windows 
2000/98 clients, most of which were switched off.  The cups server is 
configured to do raw printing.

There is nothing to indicate a problem in the cups error log except for the 
message at the bottom of this message.

I recently upgraded the kernel to kernel-image-2.4.18-1-k6 because I got 
some similar messages in the past.

Here is the kernel message.  I get the impression that the printer is 
occasionally disconnecting itself:

Nov  8 08:50:36 debian kernel: usb.c: USB disconnect on device 2
Nov  8 08:50:36 debian kernel: printer.c: usblp0: removed
Nov  8 08:50:36 debian kernel: usb.c: USB disconnect on device 2
Nov  8 08:50:36 debian kernel: printer.c: usblp0: removed
Nov  8 08:50:36 debian kernel: usb.c: USB disconnect on device 2
Nov  8 08:50:36 debian kernel: printer.c: usblp0: removed
Nov  8 08:50:45 debian kernel: hub.c: USB new device connect on bus2/2, 
assigned device number 3
Nov  8 08:50:46 debian kernel: usb.c: ignoring set_interface for dev 3, 
iface 0, alt 0
Nov  8 08:50:46 debian kernel: printer.c: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer 
dev 3 if 0 alt 0
Nov  8 08:50:46 debian /etc/hotplug/usb.agent: Setup printer for USB product 
4f9/11b/100
Nov  8 08:50:46 debian kernel: usb.c: ignoring set_interface for dev 3, 
iface 0, alt 0
Nov  8 08:50:46 debian kernel: printer.c: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer 
dev 3 if 0 alt 0
Nov  8 08:50:46 debian /etc/hotplug/usb.agent: Setup printer for USB product 
4f9/11b/100
Nov  8 08:50:46 debian kernel: usb.c: ignoring set_interface for dev 3, 
iface 0, alt 0
Nov  8 08:50:46 debian kernel: printer.c: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer 
dev 3 if 0 alt 0
Nov  8 08:50:46 debian /etc/hotplug/usb.agent: Setup printer for USB product 
4f9/11b/100
Nov  8 08:50:47 debian /etc/hotplug/usb.agent: missing kernel or user mode 
driver printer

I'm getting this in the cups error log:

E [08/Nov/2004:09:01:11 +1100] get_printer_attrs: resource name 
'/printers/mfc9880,winspool,ne04:' no good!
E [08/Nov/2004:09:01:40 +1100] get_printer_attrs: resource name 
'/printers/mfc9880,winspool,ne04:' no good!
E [08/Nov/2004:09:05:49 +1100] get_printer_attrs: resource name 
'/printers/mfc9880,winspool,ne04:' no good!