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Old 02-25-2005, 01:39 PM   #1
jkcunningham
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Printing problems: still the bane of Linux


Hi;

I am new to FreeBSD, but not to Linux. I've set up dozens of systems (Redhat, Gentoo, and now FreeBSD), and maintained them for years. I am not an expert by any means, but I know how to do a great deal, and have always been able to do pretty much whatever I wanted. Printing is the exception.

I currently have printing working on half a dozen systems - some hosting printers directly via parallel ports, and some as network printers using samba. I am running Linux systems both at work and at home. I have successfully installed printing using apsfilter and using CUPS. But in most cases I only succeeded by luck and happenstance. There does not seem to be any consistent way to install printers and troubleshoot printing problems - and there are almost always problems. Currently I have two systems that I cannot make work. One is a Gentoo system (latest kernel) identical to another: one prints, one won't. Nothing in dmesg or the logs gives any indication why (and I have the logs printing out everything possible). The second system is a new FreeBSD 5.3-stable system I just set up for my wife.

I made the switch from Windows to Linux in the nineties and I never want to go back. I can't stand the way things are done in Windows - never mind the open/closed source issue. But I have had to maintain Windows systems as well since that time because some people need to use their desktops as office workstations and don't have the technical backgrounds to manage Linux. By 'office workstation' I mean they need word processing, mail and printing capabilities. OpenOffice has solved the first; Thunderbird and Evolution have solved the second. After years of working on my wife to switch, she finally agreed after her most recent attack of pop-up madness or whatever you want to call the registry affliction that is attacking everyone's Windows computers these days. She'd finally had it. Would I set her up with Linux?

I chose FreeBSD for her, because with Gentoo (which I generally have preferred) there is too much maintainence overhead. It's a distribution for someone who likes to get under the hood, which is fine on my own machines, but too much trouble on everyone elses. I have heard many good things about FreeBSD - raves, in fact. I thought I'd have my best shot and a high-quality, low-maintainence distribution with FreeBSD.

I had no trouble installing FreeBSD. Its beautiful, in fact. Her machine is a recent model SIS-based motherboard with a duron processor. It has had two different Linux's installed and working prior to this FreeBSD, so there are no hardware compatibility issues I am aware of. FreeBSD correctly configured networking, video, etc. I connected two different printers to it (she uses them both) - one is a Samsung ML-1210 hooked to the parallel port, the other is an Epson Stylus Photo R200 connected to a usb port. Both of these printers worked for her under Windows on this machine. Dmesg indicates that both the ports are configured and operating. I had an interrupt flood message at first, but eliminated it by increasing the max count in the appropriate config file.

I have tried to set up both of these printers to work with either apsfilter or CUPS and failed at both. I've already spent one weekend and several evenings. If I can't get her printers working fairly soon, I am going to be forced to blow FreeBSD away and set her up with Windows again. Its humiliating. Its a terrible state of affairs - her needs are so simple. If someone like me can't make it work, FreeBSD (and Linux) is not ready for primetime.

The state of affairs with printing is as follows: if I try to send some plain text to the parallel port:

cat /etc/passwd > /dev/lpt0

that printer blinks, the motor winds up, but it does nothing and eventually stops blinking. Dmesg indicates this port is operating correctly. I tried it in both interrupt driven and poll-driven modes. I tried all three bios settings (EPP+EPC, Bi-directional, and Traditional). There are no other parallel port options in the bios. And, as I said earlier, it worked under EPP+EPC in windows.

I think this is the problem that has to be solved first, and no amount of googling has led me to any clues how to solve it. This printer will print plain text - it did before with Gentoo. On the chance that this symptom is irrelevant I also tried lpr -P <samsung> /etc/passwd under apsfilter, then installed CUPS, configured the printer and tried it again under CUPS with no output either time. It blinks a bit then stops. I turned on maximal error logging, but the logs show that CUPS thinks everything is peachy.

The situation with the Epson is slightly different: the same test (to /dev/ulpt0) prints pages of garbage and has to be powered down to be cleared. Again, dmseg indicates that the /dev/ulpt0 port is working correctly, so I'm figuring the kernel is set up properly for printing to a usb port. I set up CUPS using the Gimp-print driver - following the suggestions of others who have successfully setup this printer. It fairs no better - and again, the cups log thinks its working fine.

How can I troubleshoot this? Why is this such a problem?

This is not a rant - really - I am looking for help.

Last edited by jkcunningham; 02-25-2005 at 03:50 PM.
 
Old 02-25-2005, 03:13 PM   #2
sigsegv
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So, I assume you saw this thread on the ML1210 then? I have no idea if it works or not as I don't have one -- that's just what google turned up for me.

No idea on the photo printer. I don't have any of those either, and if I did, I'd use OS X for it anyway. (It's been my general experience that the *NIX drivers for photoprinters suck compared to their commercial counterparts)

Most problems people have with printing is due to their lack of understanding of LPR and company. LPR and company have fine troubleshooting facilities if you're used to using them. If you're not, man <appropriate thing> and become enlightened.

I'm not trying to berate you, but don't blame the software if you're having problems. 99% of the time, it's user error.

Last edited by sigsegv; 02-25-2005 at 03:15 PM.
 
Old 02-25-2005, 03:49 PM   #3
jkcunningham
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Yes, I've seen that thread. I've installed foomatic-rip, foomatic-gswrapper, the ppd, etc. And I've read the man pages on lpd, etc. And I agree with you that 99% of the time, its user error - and perfectly willing for it to be this time as well. I don't have an ego problem, I have a printing problem. And nothing I've seen has solved it. Like I said, it isn't passing the number 1 test that is recommended in the howto's: sending some plaintext straight to /dev/lpt0. The man pages on lpr aren't going to help with that.

Update: I have the Epson working now. Apparently, there are two usb drivers, one labeled "no reset" (/dev/unlpt0) which works with the CUPS driver. I had selected the normal one before.

I am still trying to solve the Samsung ML-1210 problem.

Last edited by jkcunningham; 02-26-2005 at 12:39 PM.
 
Old 02-28-2005, 12:15 PM   #4
jkcunningham
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Registered: May 2002
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I managed to get it working finally. For the benefit of anyone else having similar troubles. I never could get the gdi driver to work (the one that the CUPS section in linuxprinting.org recommends). That one was failing on with some kind of "Exec error" from the ppmtogdi script from Samsung.

What I did manage to make work was the foomatic driver. Originally I couldn't get past the error trying to write to /dev/fd/3. I finally figured out that I had to create /dev/fd/3 because FreeBSD only creates 0-2. There's a thread here that describes the process

http://www.linuxprinting.org/pipermail/ … 2002q3.txt

basically, you need to # mount -tfdescfs fdesc /dev/fd

I assume one can put this in /etc/fstab somehow so it reboots correctly, but I haven't done it yet.

All of my remaining issues were simple ones involving setting the cupsd.conf and client.conf so browsing is visible.

-Jeff
 
  


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