I am trying to use an HP 3820, with a USB port in Slackware 8.1.

It requires the hpijs module, which I've downloaded and installed succesfully. Then got a .pdd file from linuxprinting.org for my exact make, and installed it as directed from their site. I then used CUPS to add the printer.

At this point I have the cupsd and lpd services up. The usb port is mounted.

The commands lpr or lp will print text files or jpgs. Not ps files.

However, I cannot print from any browser (galeon, konquoror, mozilla). Nothing seems to be sent to the print queue. I've tried every different argument I could thing of for mozilla's print config menu: lp, lpr, lp -P hpPrinter, etc... When I lpq or lpstat, the is nothing listed. Yet the browser claims it's sending to my printer, by name, "hpPrinter", no matter what the args.

When I look at the settings under KDE's printer manager, the printer is listed, and all settings look like this:

Type: Local printer
State: Idle (accepting jobs)
Location: /dev/usb/lp0
Description: HP DeskJet 3820, hpijs

Device: usb://HP/DeskJet 3820?serial=CN2BG1B0YH18
Model: HP DeskJet 3820, Foomatic + hpijs (recommended)


As far as I can tell, this looks right. But the option to print a test page does the same thing as my browser, nothing. Nor can I print from the test from the cups browser config page.

Here my is my printcap:

# This file was automatically generated by cupsd(8) from the
# /etc/cups/printers.conf file. All changes to this file
# will be lost.
hpPrinter|HP DeskJet 3820, hpijs:rm=marsha:rp=hpPrinter:

So I can print from lp/lpr but no other way.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. As an aside I'll mention that I set this printer up in Redhat 8 and 9. The correct drivers were found in both. But each time I would try to print something, it would freeze the machine so hard I would have to reset to reboot, and then I could never load linux again, not through a boot disk etc. That hasn't happend here, though.

if your using kde, try sending the job to 'kprinter'

Tried that as well.

i'm pretty sure the browsers send stuff to the printer in
postscript format, so if you can't print postscript, thats
why it will not print in the browser. Don't work
about getting it printing in the browsers until you get
postscript working, and i guess that going to be with
ghostscript.

Thanks, for the tip. I'll work on that end.

SOLVED!!!

Geez, this one took me a long time, and the solution was sooo simple.

I was able to print ps files, but couldn't get any browser to output a viable ps file.

I ran $ gs -h, and looked at the font path, which was /usr/local/share/ghostscript/fonts. When I looked that for that path, it didn't exist, my fonts were in /usr/share/ghostscript/fonts - doh!!

Symlinked and all is well.

Thanks for the direction whansard