I have been given an old Canon BJC-4310SP printer.

Performing the "built-in" test print works perfectly.

Using the standard CUPS installation procedure (in Debian Lenny) also worked without a hitch. The new printer was correctly identified, CUPS suggested the appropriate driver and then installed and configured the printer as directed.

So far, so good.

But asking CUPS to print its test page crashed with the following message:

"Unable to open parallel port device file: Permission denied"

Any advice that will enable me to decipher this error message will be gratefully received.

felixk

I suggest you investigate which user 'owns' the printer and which group has permission to use it.

Sounds like it might just be a case of your user needing permission to access the device.

If you can't get it to work, the gurus here will want to know what distro/version you are running at the very least.

Bob

@amenditman that'll be Debian Lenny 5.0.3

@felixk - I have you in my sights, but I am rather busy typing up a report due yesterday, I presume that you had to run CUPS as root or did you use the web/browser interface. I am running kde, so you will have to let me know if you are running gnome or some other desktop manager.

Can I presume that you have your cups daemon running. The output of:

ps aux | grep cups

would let you know

Then we need to know if your 'ppdev' module is loaded> Run:

Thank you for taking the time to post the above comment - especially when you have real work on your hands.

I also sent my query to our local Linux Users Group, and scored the following comment (edited):

| Felix, there are a *lot* of hits on Google for this CUPS error. So
| many in fact, that I couldn't find the One True Answer after reading
| half a dozen of them.

So the short story is:

It is a CUPS bug - not fixed, despite the fact that it has been around for a long time.

The printer (almost as aged as I am) works OK in a Windows environment. It is probably a lost cause under Linux. And Canon offers no support to Linux users.

felixk

Have you checked out this page:

http://www.openprinting.org/show_pri...non-BJC-4310SP

and have you tried the suggested driver/PPD file?

I have always found the info on openprinting.org (which used to be linuxprinting.org) to be reliable, and the bjc-600 driver works fine for my BJC-85. Don't blame me for the rude User Notes!

Cheers

Seems your printer is on LPT port. Look at the output of
On my system it's like this:
You can see "root lp" part of output. This means that to access this device you have to either be root, or be a member of "lp" group. Group name on your system may be different. Adding yourself to corresponding group should fix the problem after you relogin having done this..

That was where I started on my quest.

But there have been further discoveries, since my last posting (which flagged the possibility of a long-standing CUPS bug).

I normally use the latest stable version of Debian for all my computing activities. However, I also have "Puppy Linux" installed on a spare HD partition.

Out of curiosity, I tried installing the non-operational Canon BJC-4310SP printer in Puppy Linux. It installed and worked first try without a hitch.

Cold comfort, since I am not <ready|willing> to abandon Debian.

In answer to the posting from 10110111, my entry for /dev/lp0 is identical to yours:

crw-rw---- 1 root lp 6, 0 2010-01-17 19:27 /dev/lp0

felixk

See if you are in lp group:
This is my entry:
If you don't have your name in the list after last ':', you should add it there (names are separated by commas) and relogin. Other way is to use usermod command, but its effect is the same.

Yes; I am.

The problem is not at my end.

As mentioned in my previous post, it appears to be either a CUPS bug or a Debian Lenny compatibility problem. I have got the printer to work in "Puppy Linux"; and I have now been advised by a member of the local Linux Users Group that he has installed successfully the printer in both openSUSE11.1 and in Ubuntu 9.04 environments.

Thank you for trying to help.

felixk