This has been my pet peeve with Linux since I started using Linux back in 2009. Getting printers to work properly and consistently can often be a major pain in the rear. I have a Lexmark CS417 color laser printer connected via USB to my machine. No matter what I've tried in the past, due to a lack of clear step by step instructions I've never been able to install this printer manually without a .deb file. Using the Start ---> System ---> Printer settings, the printer would be found, supposedly installed, but then fails to work properly. By that I mean to say that it literally works whenever the heck it feels like it. PDF files print more often than libreoffice files. But all files fail whenever they feel like it, just spitting out a page with errors on it. It's all totally irregular without rhyme nor reason.

Printing PDF files from the Browser has always worked in Chromium ... but not in Firefox or with Brave Browser.
So I've resorted to always turning new office docs into pdf before printing. How ridiculous is that?

Last week I wanted to connect the printer over network settings so my wife could print from it on her machine as well. Silly me, totally forgot that the network module had to be purchased separately which I opted not to do at the time (3 years ago). In order to connect the printer via network settings I went ahead and used above printer settings, then selected ----> SERVER ----> CONNECT ... and instantly wiped out my ability to print.
Now there's a window with PRINT SERVICE NOT AVAILABLE, then on the next line SELECT ANOTHER SERVICE.

I can not make this window change anything. I cannot cancel out of anything. I cannot quit the process. I cannot locate another network service (duh). And I can't even find the process within the task manager in order for me to cancel it out.
I have totally hosed my print ability.

I've been working on this issue since last week and there's no doubt in my mind that I've thoroughly screwed everything up even more since there's so little helpful information (that would make sense to me) avaialble. I don't want to re-install my system from scratch.

Can someone help me *PURGE* *EVERYTHING* *PRINTER* and *CUPS* related, followed by helping me to install all of the printer related functions with cups included, again? I would really appreciate it. Thank you.

.

Show us what is reported by the following command?
That should report printer(s) queues configured and current status. The relevant printer config file is /etc/cups/printers.conf and any associated PPD files are located in the /etc/cups/ppd/ directory. These files can be editted/removed etc, but best to do that when CUPS is not running. The commands to start/stop cupsd depend on the distro.

Thanks. I'm getting ... (invalid file descriptor) ... It's a German MX Linux setup.

.

Ok, CUPS is not active. Not familiar with MX Linux, but as it is based on Debian....I assume a recent version....MX19?. If so, please run
and report back.

Thanks. Yeah, it's MX 19. Here's the output.

.

I may have accidentally deleted a cups folder or two as well. That's why I figured wiping all printer/cups related items from the system and then starting over from scratch might be the wiser way to go perhaps?

Not sure why the failure, but you might be able to examine in more detail with
It may be lengthy, so you can upload to https://pastebin.com/ and post the link to it here. The failure may well lie with a bad/missing config file I guess.

If you really want to get brutal, you can purge CUPS with
then install it again with

Yup, just as I figured, it's totally messed up. I went for the gold and purged cups. Rebooted the system, then installed cups again. No errors during removal and no errors during installation. But when I opened up Chromium in order to print out a pdf file ... I only received the option to print to file (same as saving) or printing to google cloud drive. Nothing at all for using the local printer.
Then I checked ---> SYSTEM ---> PRINTER and the printer window still opens in the same (useless) mode as before.

The first command above wasn't able to complete either. I used that command around 5 - 10 minutes ago and this is all that I've received back. There's no user prompt at the end either, it just stopped in the terminal without a blinking cursor. It's actually still there like that right now ...

.

MX does install systemd but it does not enable it by default. Did you enable systemd?

Have you verified the cups configurations files exist and are not empty? If cupsd.conf does not exist or only contains a few lines would be indicative of cups failing to start.

According to the on line specifications the printer should have a builtin Ethernet adapter. I didn't follow what network settings were changed. Can you still access your LAN or internet from MX?

Thanks for responding. I have MX boot into Systemd mode by default since that's the easiest way to have printers, vpn, and some other items working. I can't verify anything with cups because as stated, I believe the entire print-configuration is completely hosed. I can't even recall the many things that I've tried before posting here and since I used that last command, the terminal window remained active for almost 2 hours before I finally forced it to close. The output that I received in the terminal never changed beyond what I posted above.

Nothing else is affected. We don't use WiFi for security reasons so our whole house is wired LAN ... and all of it is working just fine. All of my applications such as LibreOffice, Gimp, Web-Browsers, Email, etc. is all working just fine. Only the printing function is totally hosed. I'm beginning to think that the damage is too severe to be fixed.
It's not just cups, because the System/Printer function is messed up as well. Printer displays but nothing reacts to any clicks.

The system -> printer function is just a configuration setup wizard and you can do everything from the command line or cups web interface. However, if cups isn't running its not going to work either.

Have you checked the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file?

Well, There's actually no cupsd.conf file to be found there. I have ...
/etc/cups/raw.convs
/etc/cups/raw.types
/etc/cups/snmp.conf
Those are the only 3 files there (yes, I have show hidden files enabled).

Your missing about 12 files/directories. Since your cupsd.conf file is missing cups will not start. Not much to lose, I might try a reinstall and see what happens...

apt-get --reinstall install cups

I did that, but there was no change whatsoever. /etc/cups still has those same 3 files there and nothing else. I could do a reboot, don't think that it would make a difference though.

I don't know why cups is not reinstalling correctly. Purging does not by default remove dependencies or configuration files. Installing should install everything from scratch as far as I know.