the screwup:
being that the 2.6 kernel was to be my first true major kernel recompile, i took many things for granted: the naming scheme and the fact that it is faster
so of course i wanted my bootup times to be extremely fast; since i can't use internet in linux (i use aol), i decided to take away executable permissions from rc.inetd, rc.inet1, and rc.inet2
all would be well with cups automatically right? wrong....
alright those are the things i did to make my experience with setting up printing in kernel 2.6 a bit less than pleasant; the solution:
first, realize that many modules have been renamed; i use a usb printer and many of the usb modules have been renamed (the two things that need to be modprobed for a usb printer are uhci-hcd and usblp which replace modules uhci and printer respecitively)
secondly, disable hotplug, please, it will save lots of headaches; do chmod -x rc.hotplug in /etc/rc.d/ and then add /sbin/modprobe modulename in rc.local (i added /sbin/modprobe uhci-hcd and /sbin/modprobe usblp)
third, if using cups (which i recommend that you use), understand that it uses an almost pure web-interface, which means all your internet scripts must be loaded! Make sure than in /etc/rc.d/rc.M, the lines for sysklog and internet superserver daemon are uncommented so that they load those scripts on startup; also, make sure to do chmod +x on rc.inet1 rc.inet2 and rc.inetd
now, if in slackware you have both cups and lprng installed, uninstall them both (they were installed as packages for me, so i just went into pkgtool to uninstall them); this is because these two services conflict in the use of the printing commands
go ahead now and install just one of these packages either from .tgz or from source (i recommend cups from source)
do chmod +x rc.cups in /etc/rc.d and make sure this is listed either in rc.M or rc.local
install drivers for your printer if you need any (for my hp psc, i got the hpijs driver)
reboot now to make sure all changes have taken effect and all services that should start have been initialized (from this point, i only deal with cups)
now open up a web browser, and go to
http://localhost:631; this is the cups web-interface (if you get errors about access rejected, make sure that your internet scripts have been started and that the cups scheduler has been started!)
turn on your printer, and then do dmesg in a terminal; you should see your printer getting recongized by your modules (with the usb modules, uhci-hcd recognizes the printer and usblp actually assigns it to a device)
in the cups interface, click printers, add printer, type in root and the root password at the prompt, follow the directions being careful to choose the correct device for where your printer is located and all should be well!
print a test page to try it out, and cross your fingers!
