[gentoo-user] Re: Please help me get my printer working again.

[James <wireless@tampabay.rr.com>]

Alan Mackenzie <acm <at> muc.de> writes:



> So, thanks for the email, it brought me back to sanity.


A few things to remember. Always check that cupsd is running.
(# rc-status). You may need to stop and start the cupsd.

Go to the /etc/cups dir and make a second copy of the *.conf files
and any others that you use. I give mine a .date <actual date>
string, so as to make recovery trivial in the future. Also it's
easy to 'scp' those files around to machines if/when necessary.
The cups gui interface just modifies those files.

Last, become familar with http://localhost:631/
 to use the everychanging cups interface to manage your 
networked and printing resources.

If you have HP printers, install this:  net-print/hplip

One last nuance with cups. Sometimes cupsd is running but the cups
software has stop printing. Go to the admin section of cups
(http://localhost:631/) and just start the printer again; it's
a bug_anomoly I have seen too many times.

Really, it's not that difficult with these tidbits to manage and recover
functional printing.  Using dbus as a flag setting never hurts either
and check your cups flag settings. Use the ethernet port in lieu
of the usb port, imho, if you have both on any given printer......


hth,
James