[cups.general] please help - frustrating CUPS error (no one has been able to help!)

Wed Jan 14 14:39:43 PST 2009

I am trying to get my HP Deskjet 960c color inkjet printer working on
Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) with  CUPS. I have tried everything but
nothing works :-(

I booted up, hooked my printer up to the parallel port and powered it
on, added paper, printer's green light is on.

I then went to System -> Administration -> Printing in GNOME
Clicked on New Printer and it ran gnome-cups-add and read the printer database

Then the Add a Printer dialog box says:
Step 1 of 3: Printer Connection
Printer Type: local printer
Use a detected printer: HP DESKJET_960C

It has in Printer Port: (greyed out so I can't change it):
hp:/par/DESKJET_960C?device=/dev/parport0 (HP DESKJET_960C)

So it detected my correct printer.

Then I went Forward to:
Step 2 of 3: Printer Driver
Manufacturer: HP
Model: Deskjet 960C
Driver: hpijs (recommended) - HPLIP 0.9.7 (Suggested) There is a green
dot after this showing it is installed.

Then I went Forward to:
Step 3 of 3: Printer Information
Name: Deskjet
Description: HP-DESKJET
Location: home

So after I filled those in I clicked Apply.

But when I go back to the Printers control panel I don't see any
printer in there. It just says has the New Printer icon to create a
new printer. It should have created the printer I setup. And when I
try to print it said in the console: lpr: Error - no default
destination available. So apparently it is not setting it up.Booted
up, hooked my printer up to the parallel port and powered it on, added
paper, printer's green light is on.

I then went to System -> Administration -> Printing
Clicked on New Printer and it ran gnome-cups-add and read the printer database

Then the Add a Printer dialog box says:
Step 1 of 3: Printer Connection
Printer Type: local printer
Use a detected printer: HP DESKJET_960C

It has in Printer Port: (greyed out so I can't change it):
hp:/par/DESKJET_960C?device=/dev/parport0 (HP DESKJET_960C)

So it detected my correct printer.

Then I went Forward to:
Step 2 of 3: Printer Driver
Manufacturer: HP
Model: Deskjet 960C
Driver: hpijs (recommended) - HPLIP 0.9.7 (Suggested) There is a green
dot after this showing it is installed.

Then I went Forward to:
Step 3 of 3: Printer Information
Name: Deskjet
Description: HP-DESKJET
Location: home

So after I filled those in I clicked Apply.

But when I go back to the Printers control panel I don't see any
printer in there. It just says has the New Printer icon to create a
new printer. It should have created the printer I setup. And when I
try to print it said in the console: lpr: Error - no default
destination available. So apparently it is not setting it up.

I verified I have the correct drivers installed:

ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ dpkg -l|grep hplip
ii hplip 0.9.7-4ubuntu1 HP Linux Printing and Imaging System (HPLIP)
ii hplip-data 0.9.7-4ubuntu1 HP Linux Printing and Imaging - data files
ii hplip-ppds 0.9.7-4ubuntu1 HP Linux Printing and Imaging - PPD files
ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ dpkg -l|grep hpijs
ii foomatic-db-hpijs 1.5-20060318-1 linuxprinting.org printer support - database
ii hpijs 2.1.7+0.9.7-4ubuntu1 HP Linux Printing and Imaging - gs IJS drive

Here are my cups packages:

ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ dpkg -l|grep cups
ii  bluez-cups                             2.24-0ubuntu6 Bluetooth
printer driver for CUPS
ii  cupsys                                 1.2.0-0ubuntu5 Common UNIX
Printing System(tm) - server
ii  cupsys-bsd                             1.2.0-0ubuntu5 Common UNIX
Printing System(tm) - BSD comman
ii  cupsys-client                          1.2.0-0ubuntu5 Common UNIX
Printing System(tm) - client pro
ii  cupsys-driver-gutenprint               5.0.0~rc2-0ubuntu6 printer
drivers for CUPS
ii  gnome-cups-manager                     0.31-1.1ubuntu13 CUPS
printer admin tool for GNOME
ii  libcupsimage2                          1.2.0-0ubuntu5 Common UNIX
Printing System(tm) - image libs
ii  libcupsys2                             1.2.0-0ubuntu5 Common UNIX
Printing System(tm) - libs
ii  libgnomecups1.0-1                      0.2.2-1ubuntu5 GNOME
library for CUPS interaction
ii  libgnomecupsui1.0-1c2a                 0.31-1.1ubuntu13 UI
extensions to libgnomecups

I found the program that adds the printer is gnome-cups-manager which
calls gnome-cups-add so I ran that, but after I go through and select
everything (ran 'sudo gnome-cups-manager') it still doesn't add the
printer and in the console it says:
** (gnome-cups-add:28853): WARNING **: IPP request failed with status 1280

I found this is /var/log/cups/error_log:
E [31/Dec/2008:08:15:02 -0500] CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer: Unauthorized

I ran as root this time (sudo) so I don't understand why it is saying
I am unauthorized.

And I found this in /var/log/cups/access_log:
localhost - - [31/Dec/2008:08:14:18 -0500] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 1652
CUPS-Get-Devices -
localhost - - [31/Dec/2008:08:14:26 -0500] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200
652837 CUPS-Get-PPDs -
localhost - - [31/Dec/2008:08:15:02 -0500] "POST /admin/ HTTP/1.1" 401
352 CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer successful-ok
localhost - root [31/Dec/2008:08:15:02 -0500] "POST /admin/ HTTP/1.1"
200 352 CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer server-error-internal-error

I also tried running as normal user (and I verified I am in group
lpadmin) and same result.

I even tried the cups web interface: http://localhost:631/admin

I selected Add Printer and choose my model HP960C and the hplip driver
but when I go to apply it says:
413 Request Entity Too Large
What does this mean?!

I have exhausted every solution I could find As a last resort I tried
running lpadmin to set the printer manually and I get that stupid
ambiguous error message again, same one I got in the cups web
interface. Does anyone know what this error message means and how I
can get my printer (HP Deskjet 960C hooked up to parallel port) setup
using lpadmin:

ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ sudo lpadmin -h localhost -p HP -D printer -u
allow:ubuntu -P
/rofs/usr/share/cups/model/hpijs/HP/HP-DeskJet_960C-hpijs.ppd
lpadmin: Request Entity Too Large

ubuntu at ubuntu:~$ sudo ls -ld /var /var/spool /var/spool/cups /var/spool/cups/tmp
drwxr-xr-x 10 root   root 160 2009-01-01 02:35 /var
drwxr-xr-x  6 root   root  80 2009-01-01 02:30 /var/spool
drwx--x---  5 cupsys lp    60 2008-12-31 18:09 /var/spool/cups
drwxrwx--T  4 cupsys lp    40 2006-05-17 08:46 /var/spool/cups/tmp

Zach