Printer Heaven? Printer Hell?
Posted 11-02-2009 at 10:05 PM by SrDorothy
I've been having fits lately with the printing situation. Installed Mepis 8 on one of the networked computers hoping more media stuff would work...but what happened was that it messed up the...you guessed it: the printing situation! "Suddenly," as tech support so often reports hearing, none of the Mepis computers could find the printer (now shared via a small print server).
I've been getting lessons about computers talking to each other on a network. That idea was, until recently, just theory to me; I mean I suspected it was for real, but couldn't prove it. But I now have hard evidence that they DO talk. Sometimes they tell the truth and that's great, things go well. Sometimes one of them tells a lie--or heck, maybe just verbalizes a mistaken idea, I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt--and then all hell breaks loose.
For example, one says "The printer is at IP #xx.x.x.xxx" (when the actual IP is xx.x.x.yyy)........and the others BELIEVE it. Think you can convince them otherwise? No way. My solution was to install on one computer Puppy Linux, a straightforward and innocent Linux distro who (so far) cannot tell a lie. And once Puppy was on the network, Mepis could find the printer, too. Hmm. Of course if I turn the Puppy computer off, Mepis says, "Whoops! No printer, sorry!" So Mepis only knows where the printer is when Puppy tells it. Fine, as long as <b>I</b> know what's going on!
I've been getting lessons about computers talking to each other on a network. That idea was, until recently, just theory to me; I mean I suspected it was for real, but couldn't prove it. But I now have hard evidence that they DO talk. Sometimes they tell the truth and that's great, things go well. Sometimes one of them tells a lie--or heck, maybe just verbalizes a mistaken idea, I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt--and then all hell breaks loose.
For example, one says "The printer is at IP #xx.x.x.xxx" (when the actual IP is xx.x.x.yyy)........and the others BELIEVE it. Think you can convince them otherwise? No way. My solution was to install on one computer Puppy Linux, a straightforward and innocent Linux distro who (so far) cannot tell a lie. And once Puppy was on the network, Mepis could find the printer, too. Hmm. Of course if I turn the Puppy computer off, Mepis says, "Whoops! No printer, sorry!" So Mepis only knows where the printer is when Puppy tells it. Fine, as long as <b>I</b> know what's going on!
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