How to debug printer issues
 

I'm curious what the best method would be to debug a printer issue. The other day, my mother calls saying that nothing is coming out of her printer. (It is an Epson R300 I think.) She uses SuSE 9.2/KDE. I told her to go into the Printing Manager and look at her printer. There was a red exclimation point next to it. I told her to right-click the printer and select "start printer". She did. (She was forced to type in her CUPS password which is different than her Admin password. I almost forgot what it was...)

Anyway, still nothing.

Eventually, I come by to check into it. There's nothing listed in the printing manager and nothing in the print jobs list. Yet printing doesn't happen. I check her USB connections - all good. I check the USB Status - all good.

Eventually, I go into the CUPS Admin tool via Firefox and see that there are about twenty jobs lined up. Also the printer is listed as "stopped". (The KDE Print Manager said it was "accepting jobs".)

I started the printer in CUPS Admin and then it started spewing out jobs. One by one I managed to stop the jobs (there's no mulitple select) and got her printer working.

Was there a better way to diagnose this issue?

You could look in /var/log/cups
When she booted did it not start or did it stop for some reason?

I have no idea if it started or was stopped.

You mean this log, right?

I [30/Jun/2005:04:03:49 -0700] Loaded configuration file "/etc/cups/cupsd.conf"
I [30/Jun/2005:04:03:49 -0700] Configured for up to 100 clients.
I [30/Jun/2005:04:03:49 -0700] Allowing up to 100 client connections per host.
I [30/Jun/2005:04:03:49 -0700] Full reload is required.
I [30/Jun/2005:04:03:51 -0700] LoadPPDs: Read "/etc/cups/ppds.dat", 3762 PPDs...
I [30/Jun/2005:04:03:53 -0700] LoadPPDs: No new or changed PPDs...
I [30/Jun/2005:04:03:54 -0700] Full reload complete.

That's from my system.

Yea have her look at that for a start, you should get her to register here at the forum and she can ask around.