"Printer not connected" - but it is

Kurt Pfeifle kpfeifle at danka.de
Wed Jul 19 17:36:11 PDT 2006


Roger Morgan <halbtaxabo-rm at yahoo.com> wrote (Wednesday 19 July 2006 12:09):

> I'm using Debian Etch. I can't print through CUPS. The status is "Printer not connected; will retry in
> 30 seconds...". CUPS correctly shows the device URI as usb:/dev/usb/lp0.
> 
> But if I generate a gdi file with ghostscript, then su to root,

Ah, you're cheating  :-)

> I can do this: 
> cat file.gdi >/dev/usb/lp0
> and it prints successfully.

Here's a challenge for you: Don't su to root, su to that user which 
cupsd is running as instead (cupsys?, lp? -- dunno what Etch uses...). 
Then repeat again what you did above as root.

Does it still work? If not, your permissions for the /dev/usb/lp0 
device need to be fixed so that cupsd can do the same as root can.
 
> (BTW this little test really brought home to me how little CUPS actually DOES. 

:-)

> All the work is being 
> done by ghostscript and the usblp driver. They are working. All CUPS has to do is coordinate the
> queuing, and maybe accept files from Samba, which does the work of allowing remote printing in case
> you're printing remotely which I'm not.)

Alle the user has to do is coordinate the file permissions for his 
industrious daemons to do what he asks them to do, and maybe change
a few of them, so CUPS can actually doe its work to send a file off 
the usb interface, instead of outwearing itself in vain by two
unsuccessful retries per minute, hoping his user fixed the problem 
in the meantime   :-)

> Has anyone else seen and solved this problem?

Cheers,
Kurt





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