I've been running Gentoo 2.6.3 at the office for some time. Until recently I've had no problems printing on my parallel port HPLaserjet6. Now it's decided that for users other than root it will only from my text editor, gedit. For users other than root it will not print pages from Mozilla, Open Office 6.0 or openoffice. No help from the Gentoo forums. It sounds like a weird permissions problem. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Bob

First question would always be: what have you
installed recently, what did you change?

For diagnostics we'd need to know which
printing system you actually use, cups, lprng,
... ?


Cheers,
Tink

Thanks for the reply.

I've recently installed openoffice using the Gentoo emerge tool. It turned out to be a bit of an ordeal as my /var/tmp/portage directory was too small. I ended up setting up /var/tmp/portage on another disk and another partition.

I'm using cups and have deleted the printer and reinstalled it once. I suppose I could reinstall cups, hpijs, and reinstall the printer after that, but I'm not sure whether that's the way to go.

Thanks.


Bob

Well - I don't know whether Gentoo would muck
around with CUPS when it installs OO, it may well
have. I'd suggest you edit cupsd.conf and set the
notch for the log-levels a bit higher and read the
logs after having tried to print from both root and
a normal user so you can determine whether the
problem is indeed with CUPS or not.


Cheers,
Tink

Here's the setup in cupsd.conf:

# LogLevel: controls the number of messages logged to the ErrorLog
# file and can be one of the following:
#
debug2 Log everything.
# debug Log almost everything.
# info Log all requests and state changes.
# warn Log errors and warnings.
# error Log only errors.
# none Log nothing.

Here's the error log (doesn't look like much help):

I [15/Aug/2004:13:40:47 -0500] Adding start banner page "none" to job 160.
I [15/Aug/2004:13:40:47 -0500] Adding end banner page "none" to job 160.
I [15/Aug/2004:13:40:47 -0500] Job 160 queued on 'HPLaserJet6' by 'root'.
I [15/Aug/2004:13:40:47 -0500] Started filter /usr/lib/cups/filter/pstops (PID 14960) for job 160.
I [15/Aug/2004:13:40:47 -0500] Started filter /usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip (PID 14961) for job 160.
I [15/Aug/2004:13:40:47 -0500] Started backend /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel (PID 14962) for job 160.
I [15/Aug/2004:13:44:47 -0500] Adding start banner page "none" to job 161.
I [15/Aug/2004:13:44:47 -0500] Adding end banner page "none" to job 161.
I [15/Aug/2004:13:44:47 -0500] Job 161 queued on 'HPLaserJet6' by 'user'.
I [15/Aug/2004:13:44:47 -0500] Started filter /usr/lib/cups/filter/pstops (PID 15301) for job 161.
I [15/Aug/2004:13:44:47 -0500] Started filter /usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip (PID 15302) for job 161.
I [15/Aug/2004:13:44:47 -0500] Started backend /usr/lib/cups/backend/parallel (PID 15303) for job 161.

They look identical indeed :)

What are the permissions on the relevant libraries,
on the printers raw-device?
Are the kernel modules for lpr loaded?


Cheers,
Tink

root@dragonfly user # ldd `which cupsd` | awk '{print $3}' | xargs ls -l
ls: (0xffffe000): No such file or directory
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Jul 5 17:28 /lib/ld-linux.so.2 -> ld-2.3.3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 5 17:28 /lib/libc.so.6 -> libc-2.3.3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Jul 5 17:28 /lib/libcrypt.so.1 -> libcrypt-2.3.3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Jul 5 17:28 /lib/libdl.so.2 -> libdl-2.3.3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Jul 5 17:28 /lib/libnsl.so.1 -> libnsl-2.3.3.solrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Feb 29 10:36 /lib/libpam.so.0 -> libpam.so.0.77
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 5 17:29 /lib/libz.so.1 -> libz.so.1.2.1
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 1018976 Jul 5 18:51 /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 110092 Jul 5 20:55 /usr/lib/libcups.so.2
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 190040 Jul 5 18:51 /usr/lib/libssl.so.0.9.7


root@dragonfly user # ls -l /dev/lpr
ls: /dev/lpr: No such file or directory


root@dragonfly user # lsmod
Module Size Used by


No results from last command.


Bob

Sorry, my bad ...

ls -l /dev/lp*


As or the modules:
Is everything compiled into your kernel rather than
using modules?

And for the ldd output: many listed libs are just symlinks,
can you follow those and check the permissions on the
real things?


Cheers,
Tink

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 78728 Jul 5 17:28 ld-2.3.3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 11 Jul 5 17:28 ld-linux.so.2 -> ld-2.3.3.so

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1151000 Jul 5 17:28 libc-2.3.3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 5 17:28 libc.so.6 -> libc-2.3.3.so

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 18732 Jul 5 17:28 libcrypt-2.3.3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Jul 5 17:28 libcrypt.so.1 -> libcrypt-2.3.3.so

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 10324 Jul 5 17:28 libdl-2.3.3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Jul 5 17:28 libdl.so.2 -> libdl-2.3.3.so

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 76472 Jul 5 17:28 libnsl-2.3.3.so
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Jul 5 17:28 libnsl.so.1 -> libnsl-2.3.3.so

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Feb 29 10:36 libpam.so.0 -> libpam.so.0.77
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 33524 Feb 29 10:36 libpam.so.0.77

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 13 Jul 5 17:29 libz.so.1 -> libz.so.1.2.1
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 63428 Jul 5 17:29 libz.so.1.2.1

root@dragonfly user # ls -l /dev/lp*
lr-xr-xr-x 1 root root 10 Aug 15 11:42 /dev/lp0 -> printers/0

Yes, I have everything compiled into the kernel. I'm rather new at Linux and have felt rather safe that way.

whoops, here are the permissions on the target of that symlink:
root@dragonfly user # ls -al /dev/printers/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Dec 31 1969 .
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Dec 31 1969 ..
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 6, 0 Dec 31 1969 0

Try
chmod a+w /dev/printers/0

My educated guess is that it won't print if
you can't write to it (which of course doesn't
really matter if you're root ;}) ..

If that seems too unsafe think about a group
that has printing permissions, chgrp to that
group and make your users members of it.


Cheers,
Tink