cups problem in Mandrake 10.1 community

Hi Ho,
I have seen other threads that touch on this problem, but none that proposes a solution, or at least one that I understand.
My Mandrake 10.1 Community (updated from 9.2) was taking a VERY long time to boot up, and I read that removing CUPS so that it doesn't start at bootup would solve that problem, which it did. But now when I want to print it wants CUPS, so I have to go into the Control Center and start it up.

I never had any problems with CUPS in 9.2, what's the scoop? Is there a nice way to fix this?
Thanks very much,
Carol

Worth trying to "get under the hood" and do some digging and debugging on why cups is failing to load properly.

Try restarting cups through the terminal.
Open terminal
su to root
run the command /etc/init.d/cups start
To stop change start -> stop

Once it has/is in the process of starting open another terminal and have a look at its logs. I think they are under /var/log/cups or any entries in /var/log/messages.

See what errors are produced.

The Phantom

Cups will take a long time to start at boot if you have no local DNS set up on your network... and no configured printer.

What you want to do is add the IP of your printer to /etc/hosts, so that your printer can be referred to by name...

e.g.

ping hplaserjet5

will return a proper result.

Then set up the printer in cups.

Cups will no longer scan the network at startup and you will not experience the undue delays.

Thanks opjose, that was perfectly clear, but when did it ,
ie

ping EPSON_670

I get: unknown host EPSON_670

Hmmm. What am I doing wrong? EPSON_670 is indeed the name of my printer in the Control Center, where it defined.


Carol

ping by name will fail if the printer doesn't have a corresponding entry in /etc/hosts...

Add an entry which corresponds to it's actual IP address.

e.g.

192.168.0.12 EPSON_670.mydomain.com EPSON_670

where mydomain.com is what you have set up your local domain as during the installation of Mandrake.

Of course the above is for a networked printer, not a directly connected one.

If you have a directly connected printer you'll want to set up cups only to use the local printer and not try to contact network printers.

Hi again,

Ok, I get that. I have a directly connected printer. Actually 2. But only one computer, so no network.
How do I set up CUPS in this case?

Sorry if I seem dense, it's just that I tried several different CUPS configurations, to no avail.
There aren't that many things to check and uncheck in that CUPS configuration module in the Control Center, it's just not obvious to me. Maybe there's somehthng somewhere else?

Thanks so much,
Carol

I bellieve that what you have to do is first make sure that the Linux machine knows it's own "name".

Usually it's "name" is associated with the first ethernet interface.

You should have assigned a name during network configuration, as this is rather important.

Type "hostname" to determine what the machine thinks it's name is.

If you see local anything, then you have not properly configured it.

Once it's set up then make sure you can ping the machine by hostname...

e.g.

ping bluebox.mydomain.com

should give you a result... instead of an error.

If necessary you may need to add the machine's own name and IP to /etc/hosts

Then if cups is still slow in starting; you will need to edit the /etc/cups files and find all references to Servername, etc. and uncomment this and change the name to reflect that of the local host.

This last step is not usually required if the host can resolve itself.

HI,

I typed "hostname" and my machine thinks its name is "localhost." I guess that's bad. How do I name it something else?

My /etc/hosts has an IP number and "localhost. "

Do I just change it there or is there another process to go through somewhere?

Merci,
Carol

Go into the MCC and edit your configuration.

MCC/Network & Internet/Internet Access

Where it says "Host Name (Optional)" enter your computer's fully qualified hostname in it's long form...

e.g.


bluebox.mydomain.com

If you are behind a firewall you can make this up and use anything you want, though ideally mydomain.com should be the same thing you use for any other connected machines.

If your computer is directly connected to the internet, you really cannot just make something up as this will likely conflict with a real registered computer with the same name someplace.

Thenk hit OK and reboot.

Then try hostname again.

Hi again,

OK, I now get a correct return for "hostname" as in bluebox.mydomain.com.

But after I login it still blocks on the Community 10.1 blue screen for a long while before giving me the desktop.

Do I really have to go edit /etc/cups files? I looked at some of them and they are all comments, or it seemed so...

Carol

Have you configured your printer in cups yet?

Hi again,
Here's something that might help figure this out. When I go into the main menu - SYSTEM - CONFIGURATION - PRINTING - CUPS www admin tool, I get a page that opens and says this:

an error occurred while loading http://localhost:631/:
could not connect to localhost (port 631)

Before, in 9.2, I used to use this to cancel a print job, and everything worked just fine.

So, how can I help it find what it's looking for? I had this same error on opening the CUPS admin tool even before I changed the name of my computer from localhost to something else.

Thanks again,
C

Is the CUPS service started?

e.g

service cups start

as root.

Also do you have IPTABLES or SHOREWALL installed on the system?

Either of these will interfere with cups as they are initially set up.

Try stopping both


service iptables stop
service shorewall stop

When I typed

service cups start

it said

starting CUPS printing system: Child exited with status 98! [FAILED]

and for the other two I got

cannot find iptables (or shorewall) service

so I guess I must not have those.

Meanwhile I can still print!

What on earth is it looking for at login ? Is there somewhere else I must tell it to not look for localhost but insttead the new computername? Is that it, do you think?

Do you mean that you still CANNOT print, or CAN print?


The error means a CUPS misconfiguration.

Please answer the above and I'll follow up.