Fedora 15 doesnot detect parallel port printer
 

A kiosk machine with Fedora 15 installed , doesnot detect parallel port printer. can anyone suggest me what to do.. The system-config-printer doesnot detect anything.

the printer I am trying to connect is a parallelport TUP 942 printer.

Please suggest me what to do, I am new to linux so please speak at a slow pace or I might not understand anything.Thanks in advance.

Anindya14,

Welcome to LQ.

This link may be helpful to you:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=275538

Fedora 15 is unsupported and the latest version is Fedora 24:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releases

Thanks Beachboy2, well a I know its not new but its the version that is installed in the kiosk and I have to make the printer work in this particular version.. Is there anything I could do.. If you need any additional info please tell me I can give you that.

lsmod shows nothing, I checked for lp, ppdev, parport_pc but the modules were not there... can you tell me how to install the modules ....

As I recall, Fedora 15 had a LOT of problems. If you have a choice - try Fedora 16. If that doesn't work (and it may not), try Fedora 14.

Fedora 14 was the most workable/reliable and stable fedora release until about Fedora 20. Fedora 15 was the first one with systemd and a lot of functions just didn't work.

jpollard I have no choice for this.. .Its actually a kiosk machine and the kernel is custom ... as I said earlier the lsmod shows nothing... what I could understand from a little research on the internet is that the person who compiled the kernel has not built up the modules.. so can you say me if there is a way i can build up the modules ? or it would be even helpful if you could give me a link :)

Only by rebuilding the kernel... Unfortunate since it is a custom kernel.

You would have to have another system running Fedora 15 loaded (the compilers should match the release, as newer compilers won't necessarily accept all the code in the old system). That way you can change the configuration to include the missing drivers. It should be possible to copy just the missing modules then - but likely just as easy (or easier) to copy the new kernel+modules anyway. This usually calls for a complete development system - but at a minimum, the system would have to have the capability for two disks - one for development, the other the kiosk target disk. You could try doing this in a VM - but testing might get tricky as the VM video might not be compatible with the kiosk video.

You can get the kernel source for the kernel version, though getting the Fedora revisions might be a little harder (hunt for the source RPMs for the kernel). If it is using a generic kernel (customized by configuration options) it would be easier.

One of the problems you may have will be finding spare parts (video card mostly), but other parts might be hard to find too.

I don't think you are going to solve this problem heading down a direct route. Can I toss in a few questions to see whether we can use previous knowledge?

• Has a printer been successfully connected to this machine?
• If yes, why are you connecting a different printer?
• is the parallel printer the only option? (I am guessing you have stacks of these printers and the answer is yes)
• can you introduce a usb to parallel cable? Would this make a difference?

I am curious. Why F15 which is quite old (2011)? This suggests the installation is itself old? And it has never been used before? If you could provide a bit more background (eg. evolution of the machine) some members may have creative solutions.

Cheers

Try this and post the results (the second is a hopefuly reasonable guess)

I will explain you in details, before recompiling (which I didnot do) the kiosk machine had an issue of multiple touches i.e when people were trying to give some input , one key press would give multiple key presses ... I have no idea what is responsible for such an issue ... but after this issue was solved .. the TUP 942 thermal printer stopped working... is there a way I can copy the modules from the old image to the new one, as I found the modules lp,ppdev,parport_pc in the old image.. please say slowly so I dont miss any point :D I am new to linux and ultra new to Fedora :P And please explain me how I must proceed through the steps.. Thanks a lot in advance

If you're using CUPS you can add the printer with that. in a web browser. Select lp0 and the make and model of printer. Parallel printers usually are not detected automatically. The modules are probably in the kernel config, so they should load. You might require a ppd file off the web for that specific printer.

It seems odd that it exists in the old image but not the copy.

Since you can read the old image, why not just copy the entire disk?

But at a minimum you can copy the /boot directory and the /lib/modules directory and that SHOULD get everything as far as the drivers are concerned. I include the /boot to get the kernel the drivers in the /lib/modules are for (they are version checked - if the version doesn't match the drivers usually won't load). The drivers themselves are in the /lib/modules directory.

BTW, once you get a working system I suggest making a copy for future use as the image you currently have for backup is not valid (it is missing drivers...)

After manual module installation you need to run depmod.

Good point. I left out the depmod step, though if you copy the entire /lib/modules directory it shouldn't be necessary. Note you do have to specify the kernel version to be processed, and is best
if you are actually running the kernel involved as then you don't have to specify the version.

By "shouldn't be necessary" I mean that you would be getting the files originally generated by the depmod tool when the system was first installed. Regenerating them is not an unreasonable step. It will make sure you get all of the drivers (the result of the depmod is stored in /lib/modules/<kernel-version>.

FYI what this does is create a list of modules that can be loaded - that list is used by modprobe that will load multiple drivers (a layered driver - like the module "lp.ko" depends on the driver "parport.ko" to handle the low level interfacing with the parallel port (which can also be used by the "ppdev.ko" driver) So using the command "modprobe lp" to load the lp driver will first load the parport driver which is needed by the lp driver. Normally you wouldn't be doing this manually as the drivers get loaded when the kernel/udev scans the hardware.

As I told you in the old image there was a touchscreen input problem, and I am not sure it was due to what... so I am just wondering if I copy the files the same problem might come back.