Greetings:

I am running my fresh install of Debian 3.1R2 (Sarge) with Kernel 2.6.8-2-386 on a Dell GX-150 using an Epson Stylus Photo R220.

CUPS has been installed as well as Foomatic. The system seems to see the printer, it is autodetected and on the proper USB port. (This system does have the built in USB 1.1 and an additional USB 2.0 expansion card, the printer is on the built in USB bus).

When you try to "Print Test Page" from Gnome's Printer Manager it states the page was printed, however the queue never shows the job and the page never prints.

I could use help on this one??? What is missing?

Thanks,

Mike

Unfortunately it's pretty easy to miss some important packages while installing CUPS under Debian. Maybe this is the cause for your problem? Try the following command -- it should install all the essential packages that are needed for successfully configuring Epson printers on Debian Sarge:
After installing the packages, reboot your computer with power turned on in your printer (so that Debian can detect the printer). Then try the configuration again.

Greetings:

Thanks for the Aptitude suggestion... I did this and got a whole bunch of new drivers, but alas I still can not print and the printer is still showing up. I am really beating my head against the wall on this one... I now also have 3 printers that I can not delete apparently because I have tried to make a new one for each attempt.

Hope someone else has had this happen. It is like there is no queue for the printer if I had to guess.

Anyhow, how to remove printers from cups is appreciated too.

Thanks,

Mike

Try the web interface -- open your web browser and type this to the address field (and then hit Enter):
It will ask for user name and password. Type "root" (without quotes) as the user name and root's password for password.

Hmm... maybe your printer requires a newer driver. Linuxprinting.org recommends the gutenprint driver (that's a newer version of the gimpprint driver). Maybe you should temporarily change your /etc/apt/sources.list to point to "testing" (instead of "stable"). Then run "apt-get update" and "apt-get install cupsys-driver-gutenprint". Then change /etc/apt/sources.list to point back to "stable" and run "apt-get update" again.

You'll also need to restart the CUPS service after changing configuration. A reboot would do this but you can also use "invoke-rc.d cupsys restart".

Mixing branches (stable/testing/unstable) is always a bit risky but I don't think the above will do any harm.

supposedly we have the latest gutenburg driver for the printer installed. I was able to remove some printers and added one and sent test page but the interface says it was cancelled. There are errors in the esp interface as well.

I am not sure what is wrong but obviously something is still a-miss?

but the CUPS admin interface from the web does seem to work.

With a quick Google search I found a page suggesting that EpsonStylus Photo R220 should work with the gutenprint driver from Debian testing.
http://www.zamazal.org/linux/epson-printer.html

However, Debian Package Search for "gutenprint" shows that there's also a package called "foomatic-db-gutenprint" in testing. Maybe you'll need to install that too before the printer starts working?
http://packages.debian.org/cgi-bin/s...ll&release=all

After talking with a few people in my local LUG, We have determined that the issue is not with CUPS at all... perhaps a USB issue is at work here. We have determined that everything gets "sent" to the printer but the printer never gets the data... so something is broken between CUPS and the Epson.

Hope that helps someone to help me.

I was about to suggest upgrading also the Ghostscript package (gs-esp) from Debian testing. But if your diagnosis is correct, then I would suggest upgrading the kernel and udev from backports.org. These upgrades may improve hardware detection in some cases.

If you follow these instructions: http://backports.org/instructions.html , then the command that upgrades the kernel would probably be something like "apt-get -t sarge-backports install linux-image-2.6-686" (if "uname -m" shows "i686") and the command to upgrade udev would be "apt-get -t sarge-backports upgrade udev".

Of course, it could be a hardware problem (like a faulty connection cable).

For general CUPS troubleshooting, you can change the "LogLevel" in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf from "info" to "debug". Then you can restart the CUPS service (invoke-rc.d cupsys restart), try to print something, and then check out the error messages in /var/log/cups/error_log.

just wanted to thank everyone for their input on this question. I found out that if I update the kernel to at least 2.6.13 it will support my printer. I since went back to SuSE 10 and though I wish they had the Gutenprint drivers, it works.

Thanks again all.