[cups] Unable to add a printer

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

On Apr 30 13:29 Brian Potkin wrote (excerpt):
> On Tue, 30 Apr 2019 at 12:39, Znoteer <znoteer at mailbox.org> wrote:
...
>> Bus 001 Device 002: ID 067b:2305 Prolific Technology, Inc. PL2305 Parallel Port
>
> This is the parallel port to USB adapter mentioned by Johannes. You
> can search with "PL2305 parallel port linux" for advice.
> https://github.com/apple/cups/issues/4765 is also worth a look at.

hacks like manual editing /etc/cups/printers.conf with something like

DeviceURI parallel:/dev/usb/lp1

may no longer work because the DeviceURI scheme "parallel" is the
name of the CUPS backend program "/usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel"
which might be no longer provided in your Linux distribution
and even if it is provided that program might require to have
actual parallel port hardware in the computer, but I don't know
any details here.

In general manual editing CUPS config files is bad,
see "Command-line Tools" in
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:CUPS_in_a_Nutshell

Therefore instead of hacks the right way for special cases
is to use a custom backend to print with CUPS as described in
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Using_Your_Own_Backends_to_Print_with_CUPS

What is needed is to verify what kernel device node
can be used to send data to the printer e.g. via

echo -en "\rHello\r\f" >/dev/usb/lp0

cf. https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Installing_a_Printer


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
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