Why is printing so complicated? (HP, FOOMATIC and CUPS problems.)
 

Okay. I get it. Printing is a very complex process and there are millions of applications printing to millions of printer types. But that doesn't make me any less frustrated. :-)

I'm running RH9. I have an HP Deskjet 932 color inkjet connected via USB. I just want to print documents. Nothing fancy. No hi-res photos. Well not yet. I'll settle for being able to print some simple, black and white pdf documents.

I've installed the HPIJS printer drivers from HP, following their instructions.

I've installed the latest version of CUPS, as per their instrucutions.

I tried to print the test page from the CUPS web interface. It says the job is in the queue. I can even see it there. But nothing from the printer. My cups web interface keeps telling me that my media tray is empty. This is a bald-faced lie. I keep telling it that the media tray is fine. But I don't think it's listening.

I've tried printing from other apps. Same thing. The jobs show in the queue, but nothing comes out in the real world.

I've looked at my cups logs, and they keep muttering about command lines changing and having to restart the renderer. But it doesn't actually tell me what's wrong.

Between HP, foomatics, cups, ghostscript and god-knows what else, there's enough players in this little drama to drive a person batty. Can anybody point me at a likely place to start trying to track this down. (I'm beginning to think I'd be better off with a daisy-wheel printer over a serial connection.)

Jefficus

You need to get a daisy-wheel printer over a serial connection :}

Seriously now, Jefficus - what in the world is that? Will it print photos?

See if you have another printer service running in RH. Maybe LPRng or
some such animal. If so, it won't coexist with CUPS. You can check in
the hcl section here at LQ and read the little bit I posted about the
HP DeskJet 920C. If you follow that stuff you'll find that Till and
Grant's instructions are better than HP's :}