Running Fedora Core 3 with CUPS installed. I have a Canon i550 printer, which was printing fine locally (there is no i550 driver, but the BJC-7004 driver seemed to work fine) until a day or two ago, when, while I was messing around trying to get network printer sharing working, local printing stopped working.

Now when I try to print -- even a test page -- the printer activity light simply flashes for a few seconds, then stops; nothing prints.

I've gone into CUPS (localhost:631 - logged in as root), and tried editing the printer configuration. Eventually I just deleted the printer and created a new one from scratch. However, now I can't find the BJC-7004 printer driver. When asked to choose a driver, I am presented with only a small set of drivers -- Raw, DYMO, EPSON, Generic, HP, OKIDATA, Postcript and Zebra. No other manufacturers are listed. But even selecting Generic-text only doesn't print.

Any suggestions?

Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan

Thinking perhaps I needed to reinstall printer drivers for my i550 (but why would the originals disappear?), I dropped by linuxprinting.org, downloaded some PPD files, foomatic the gimp-print and the ghostprint stuff.

I cringed when I saw the tarball for gimp-print. Based on my earlier experiences with trying to make/build stuff on Linux, I figured my chances of it actually making and building successfully were slim to done. Apparently, in this respect, not much has changed with Linux in the five years since I first tried it.

./configure appeared to go OK. I saw no errors, and at the end got the messages "type 'make' to build" and "type 'make install' to install". So I typed "make", and got screensful of error messages, such as "error: request for member `dval' in something not a structure or union" and "error: conflicting types for 'YYSTYPE''. "make install" gave me screensful more of similar error messages, and ended with "Leaving directory `/home/calvin/gimp-print-4.2.7/src' make: *** [install-recursive] Error 1". Near as I can tell, nothing got installed.

In all the years I've been using Linux (I'm just an end-user, not a programmer), I've NEVER successfully built an application. Either dependencies aren't satisfied, or the make scripts can't find the files they need in the locations they need them or who knows what? WHEN will the Linux community get its act together on this? In Windows it's just download-and-double-click. In Linux I have to go chasing all over the Internet downloading a half-dozen or more packages, configure/make things, lather-rinse-repeat, post enquiries to multiple tech forums, and keep my fingers tightly crossed, all while yanking my hair out by the handsful over the course of several days.

Sorry, folks -- yes, this is a rant. I just want my printer working and want to know why it can't be as easy as Windows.

So where does that leave me now? I can't install gimp-print. What my next option?

Lee Kaiwen, Taiwan.

According to the FC package list , gimp-print 4.2.6 is on the installation disks, so just re-install it from there. I'm guessing that it was already installed and when you tried to install a (probably) different version, you got lots of errors.

Why your driver list changed, I don't know, but you did mention "messing around" - maybe that had something to do with it

Yeah, thanks, I eventually found and installed it last night.

Possibly , but by "messing around" I meant changing drivers, looking for a "share this printer" setting, and deleting and re-adding the printer from the CUPS configuration page -- all stuff that doesn't seem like it should make all my installed printer drivers disappear.

In any case, reinstalling gimp-print from the DVD did get my printer working, though not without some weird side effects. Instead of just getting back my Canon BJC-7100 drivers, I got back EIGHTEEN COPIES of my Canon BJC-7100 drivers. Specifically, the drivers list now shows 18 duplicate entries for every Canon printer driver. Selecting any one of the eighteen 7100s did the trick.

In any case, now it's on to my other problems: getting my XP machine to see my Linux box, figuring out how to print from XP to the printer, getting VNC to talk to the XP machine, figuring out how to play DVDs, replacing my (perfectly good) scanner with one that Linux supports, and a host of "I'll get to them when I can" issues.

I'm using Linux because I'm philosophically committed to the open source concept, and it's a good thing, too. Because whipping Linux into usable shape is turning out to be a real pain in the a**. Makes me miss Windows.

Thanks for your reply.

Lee Kaiwen,
Taiwan