I followed instructions from deadparrot I found searching this site & that went without errors but a test page produces nothing.

status shows "printer not connected will retry in30 sec,
device URI: parallel:/dev/unknown-parallel0"

the printer is a brother laser hl-5040 & i'm using the recommended driver.
lsmod shows lp, parport,parport_pc loaded

Do you have cups installed?

yes, cups is there. the error msg was from cups status window.
i followed the recs from deadparrot on another thread to install cups with aptitude. I also installed the print server option in the debian base install.
its almost like it cant find the port but i thjink i have all the right modules loaded per lsmod & the printer works in my other distros.
i'll go back in, maybe it just needed a reboot.

more info:
it didnt work on reboot-same msg from cups.
lpq sez 'brotherlaser not ready, no entries'
i do have a /dev/lp0
i dont seem to have lpd installed. do i need it? (locate lpd sez cant find) or is cups supposed to be a replacement? (tho i notice lpr <file> does not give error msg, just doesnt do anything)

even more info:
did some googling & saw tip to change uri to /dev/lp0 (makes sense). did that in /etc/printers.conf & now printer makes noise like its going to print but nothing comes out. Checking jobs show job aborted & trying a restart gives 'client-error-not-possible' msg

trying to do stuff in debian is like pulling teeth. sheesh.

Did you install cupsys-bsd? I had the same problem originally with my HP 932C. I installed cupsys-bsd, and it started working:

#apt-get install cupsys-bsd

When it asks if you want to install it, say yes. Hopefully this will help you the way it did for me.

it sez cupsys-bsd is already the newest version so guess its installed.

i tried removing/reinstalling printer but ended up with that same idiotic /dev/unknown-parallel thing. changed it back to /dev/lp0 & now am back to it making noise & not printing & aborting jobs.

also tried removing cups with apt-get but that bombed.

what i originally did was:
aptitude --with-recommends install foomatic-bin
stole that from another thread, advice from deadparrot. I get the cups interface & can install/remove/admin printers like crazy just no print output.

I had a vary nice experience with my printer when I installed Sarge using kernel-2.4. Everything worked fine. After, I installed kernel-2.6 package, I rebooted and the printer worked fine.
I made an experimental installation. I made a clear installation using kernel-2.6 ( linux26 at the prompt of debian installer ). I could not make my printer to work. Everything configured fine but the prinnter was idle. Even when I installed the package kernel-2.4 and reboot the system with it.
It's an old printer ( HP 710C ).
This is my experience.

Evidently, I've got bigger problems.
see my 'is apt-get buggy...' post.

Have gone through the gui install process: http://localhost:631 and installed the printer with the correct drivers and then done a test print?

For tompravi and other with HP Deskjet printer problems, follow my instructions found on this link: http://www.hanklambert.com/Tutorial%...s/printer.html

I finally figured out how to get the HP printers working.

Good luck, and let me know if the tutorial helped.

yes, I went thru the gui localhost:631 (got it bookmarked).

prior to that I did aptitude --with-recommends install foomatic-bin. that installed foomatic, cupsys-bsd & i or 2 other things.

However, now the aptitude gui sez there are broken dependencies with cupsys-bsd, not to mention just about everything else I've install with apt-get, so I'm now looking into that. don't know which one to trust, apt-get or the aptitude gui. Screwy cause I've read that aptitude is just a front end for apt-get.

Try running aptitude --fix-broken install

Say TigerOC, you sound like an aptitude expert, I'm looking for one of those.
What would tou say about the following situation:

Script started on Sat 16 Jul 2005 11:58:28 AM AKDT

debian:~# aptitude -f install

Reading Package Lists... Done

Building Dependency Tree... 50%

Building Dependency Tree

Reading extended state information... 65%

Reading extended state information

Initializing package states... Done

Reading task descriptions... Done

The following packages have been kept back:
libkrb53
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libevent1 libident libldap-2.2-7 libnfsidmap1 libtasn1-0
The following packages will be REMOVED:
alien apt-listbugs debconf-utils debfoster debhelper deborphan dialog
gawk gnome-audio html2text intltool-debian libdpkg-ruby1.8
libintl-gettext-ruby1.8 librpm4 libruby1.8 libxml-parser-ruby1.8
localepurge mozilla-firefox mozilla-thunderbird po-debconf rpm ruby
ruby1.8
0 packages upgraded, 5 newly installed, 23 to remove and 1 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/227kB of archives. After unpacking 76.2MB will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?] n
Abort.
debian:~# exit

This sounds rather drastic. Also tho aptitude sez cupsys-bsd is broken & the other pkgs (the ones it wants to remove) have unsatisfied dependencies, a search for broken pkgs in synaptic produces no results.

By the way the --fix-broken switch it didn't recognize but according to --help -f is fix. Maybe different version?

Do an apt-get update and then apt-get dist-upgrade. Sounds like you may have a situation where some packages have lagged behind.

I'll try a fresh install with kernel-2.6.8 and I'll follow the instructions.
Thank you.

TigerOC, I did update & dist-upgrade, all it did was download a library file. So I let aptitude do its thing then reinstalled the programs I wanted with aptitude & now its happy. One question about that however, should I move my cd lines in sources.list from the top of the file to the bottom? or does it matter. I notice 99% of the time when I install something it just asks for the cd.

Anyway I'm back to my nonprinting problem.
I goto localhost:631. print test page, the printer makes the sound like its going to print then stops, no output. I check job status & it sez aborted. I restart & it sez "client-error-not-possible". Heres the last few lines of /var/log/cups...

E [17/Jul/2005:15:24:29 -0800] Unknown directive debug on line 158.
I [17/Jul/2005:15:24:29 -0800] Listening to 0:631
I [17/Jul/2005:15:24:29 -0800] Loaded configuration file "/etc/cups/cupsd.conf"
I [17/Jul/2005:15:24:29 -0800] Configured for up to 100 clients.
I [17/Jul/2005:15:24:29 -0800] Allowing up to 100 client connections per host.
I [17/Jul/2005:15:24:29 -0800] Full reload is required.
I [17/Jul/2005:15:24:31 -0800] LoadPPDs: Read "/etc/cups/ppds.dat", 2748 PPDs...
I [17/Jul/2005:15:24:31 -0800] LoadPPDs: No new or changed PPDs...
I [17/Jul/2005:15:24:32 -0800] Full reload complete.
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:15 -0800] Started "/usr/lib/cups/cgi-bin/printers.cgi" (pid=5449)
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:17 -0800] Started "/usr/lib/cups/cgi-bin/printers.cgi" (pid=5450)
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:17 -0800] Adding start banner page "none" to job 8.
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:17 -0800] Adding end banner page "none" to job 8.
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:17 -0800] Job 8 queued on 'BrotherLaser' by ''.
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:17 -0800] Started filter /usr/lib/cups/filter/pstops (PID 5451) for job 8.
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:17 -0800] Started filter /usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip (PID 5452) for job 8.
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:17 -0800] Started backend /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel (PID 5453) for job 8.
E [17/Jul/2005:15:25:18 -0800] PID 5452 stopped with status 3!
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:18 -0800] Hint: Try setting the LogLevel to "debug" to find out more.
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:27 -0800] Started "/usr/lib/cups/cgi-bin/jobs.cgi" (pid=5460)
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:28 -0800] Started "/usr/lib/cups/cgi-bin/jobs.cgi" (pid=5462)
I [17/Jul/2005:15:25:37 -0800] Started "/usr/lib/cups/cgi-bin/jobs.cgi" (pid=5464)
E [17/Jul/2005:15:25:37 -0800] restart_job: job #8 cannot be restarted - no files!

1st question is on the 1st line. I uncommented the debug line under LogLevel in /etc/cups/cups.conf per the 'hint' in the error log. Is it talking about LogLevel in some other file?

2nd question: when I install the printer in cups it initially sets the device URI to parallel:/dev/unknown-parallel0. I set it back to /dev/lp0 manually. Is that a clue as to where the problem might be? I don't know what to make of it.

Another idea I had was uninstalling the print server package I initally selected with the base install & reinstalling it with aptitude. Any suggestions?