(This is a bit of a rant, and I'm asking for help too.. I know this will get me flames from some people who feel that have to defend linux all the time. Don't get me wrong. I defend linux to a lot of people.. but this is one place I have to admit there is a big weakness. Windows is just better and easier here... I hate admitting that)

Seriously the worst part of linux I have ever had the horror of dealing with. Every time I deal with cups it's a pain. I finally do get it working and sometimes don't know why it does, and almost never am able to remember exactly what fixed it.

Anyway, I basically have linux to windows printing down. Windows is easy to setup printers with (admit it, it's better by far). CUPS is easy to setup to print to windows (except for having to do the annoying smb://guest@ thing I used to forget to do)

But when it comes to configuring linux to print to something connected to that machine.. .. it doesn't get better, but much worse. It works inconsistently, seemingly fails without reason and I have no idea what problems occur.

Anyway, add to that my own lack of knowledge of certain things and there are real issues.

My latest attempt at getting a linux host to print included what I just did, deleting the /dev/usb/lp0 file. Now when I reboot the file doesn't come back.. when I disconnect/reconnect the usb cable it doens't either.. so.. I'm unsure how to resolve that.

Secondly, the reason I deleted it is that when it was actually there cups kept saying that it didn't exist. I tried modifying the permissions on it (went all weird and made them ugo+rw) and that didn't make cups find it. I restarted cups and that didn't find it. So then I was like.. ok I'll delete it and replug it in and try, which got me to where I am now.

And guess what funny thing happened when I did this? Now CUPS pretends that it's working. It will give me 17% page complete and it will "start" this non existant device..

It's hilarious in an absolutely insane sort of way.

*Notes above poster is an idiot*

I'm pretty sure at least part of this is that I get new kernels from time to time. I noticed after re-reading the cups documentation that.. I need a usblp module!

Duh!

Well obviously I don't have one.. hence the reason it probably didn't recreate my device node in /dev and why it didn't actually work before.

I'm fixing that.

This is what I get for knowing enough to screw my own system up by getting new kernels all the time but somehow managing not to remember to add the option for usb printers. I do think it would be nice if that option was selected by default. There are lots of things I don't need that are and it never bothered me to have that much "bloat" (less than a meg never hurt anyone).

BTW, I've asked this in other forums and no one ever said that I could.

Is there anyway to compile just one module without having to recompile the whole kernel? I would like to be able to do this if I ever forget to compile modules in the future. It would take much less time to come to a resolution anyway...