[SOLVED] Printer suddenly not working. Bad usb cable?

hazel · 06-01-2022, 12:07 PM

I've used this Brother laser printer before on both Slackware14 and Slackware15 and never had any problems with it. Now suddenly it is non-functional. Cups registers the print going through without error but nothing comes out the other end!

In my experience that means a problem either with the printer driver itself or with the connection. I don't think it's the driver because I've printed stuff before from this Slack. In dmesg I found the following:

Code:

[17066.348355] usb 1-3.1: new full-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd
[17066.429222] usb 1-3.1: New USB device found, idVendor=04f9, idProduct=0054, bcdDevice= 1.00
[17066.429235] usb 1-3.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[17066.429241] usb 1-3.1: Product: HL-1110 series
[17066.429246] usb 1-3.1: Manufacturer: Brother
[17066.429250] usb 1-3.1: SerialNumber: L6N614954
[17066.458755] usblp 1-3.1:1.0: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 5 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04 F9 pid 0x0054
[17066.458866] usbcore: registered new interface driver usblp
[17104.940270] usblp0: removed
[17106.950646] usblp 1-3.1:1.0: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 5 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04 F9 pid 0x0054
[17198.852772] usblp0: removed
[17199.390113] usblp 1-3.1:1.0: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 5 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04 F9 pid 0x0054
[17661.333569] usblp0: removed
[17661.854055] usblp 1-3.1:1.0: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 5 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04 F9 pid 0x0054
[17771.895565] usblp0: removed
[17772.664511] usblp 1-3.1:1.0: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 5 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04 F9 pid 0x0054
[18542.645672] usblp0: removed
[18543.166011] usblp 1-3.1:1.0: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 5 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04 F9 pid 0x0054
[18731.168860] usblp0: removed

That suggests a connection problem to me. I tried with another cable but got the same result.

PS Now that I come to think of it, isn't usblp supposed to be blacklisted? istr there was something wrong with that module and you're supposed to use libusb for printers.

PPS I've updated the kernel since I last used the printer successfully. I wonder if the weird loading and unloading of usblp has something to do with that.

teckk · 06-01-2022, 12:45 PM

Just a thought, have you tried it as root.

hazel · 06-01-2022, 12:53 PM

Just did that. Same result. The funny thing is it goes through the cups queue like lightening. You type lp, then immediately lpq and there's nothing there.

Interestingly there seems to be a correlation between requesting a print and the kernel removing the usblp module. As if the kernel was saying, "Nah! I'm not doing that!" Then about a second afterwards, the module gets reloaded.

jailbait · 06-01-2022, 11:22 PM

According to the Brother HL-1110 User's Guide there are two different drivers for Linux. One driver is for lpr and the other driver is for cups. Is it possible that cups and the kernel disagree as to which driver you are using?

https://download.brother.com/welcome..._uke_usr_b.pdf

ferrari · 06-01-2022, 11:37 PM

No, they're user space (higher level) drivers. This is happening at the kernel level.

ferrari · 06-01-2022, 11:47 PM

The following Debian wiki info may be helpful (for test purposes at least)...
https://wiki.debian.org/CUPSDebuggin...nected_Printer

hazel · 06-02-2022, 05:48 AM

There's nothing wrong with that printer! This morning I started up Slackware 14 and printed the file from there. It worked flawlessly. Now I have to find out why! For starters:

1) Slackware 14 has usblp blacklisted. It uses libusb to control printers.
2) The printer worked on Slackware 15 until I updated the kernel. I blacklisted usblp last night but it made no difference. I think it needs to be blacklisted when udevd starts up so that the usb devices can be correctly set up. More work to be done there. for example, did it use usblp before the kernel update? I'll have to go through the old messages files to tell for sure.

Update: this dropping and reloading of the usblp module isn't new. I've now detected it in the messages file for earlier days when the printer worked. But it's become much worse with the new kernel. There has to be some kind of connection.

hazel · 06-02-2022, 12:53 PM

No, that was too simple! I'm back on Slackware 15 with usblp blacklisted (I copied the blacklist file over from 14). So now that disconnection and reconnection doesn't seem to be happening, at least not visibly. Instead I get the more familiar kernel report:

Code:

[  697.174145] usb 1-3.1: new full-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd
[  697.252626] usb 1-3.1: New USB device found, idVendor=04f9, idProduct=0054, bcdDevice= 1.00
[  697.252641] usb 1-3.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[  697.252648] usb 1-3.1: Product: HL-1110 series
[  697.252653] usb 1-3.1: Manufacturer: Brother
[  697.252658] usb 1-3.1: SerialNumber: L6N614954

A check in /dev/bus/usb shows the printer at 001:002:

Code:

$ ls -l 001
total 0
crw-rw-r-- 1 root lp   189, 1 Jun  2 17:30 002

But it still doesn't work. You send a file, the cups logs show it as having gone through successfully, but nothing happens at the printer. I'm a member of the lp group by the way. Any other ideas?

hazel · 06-02-2022, 01:25 PM

Solved! I somehow lost my 32-bit glibc. Don't ask me how! But I decided just now that the problem had to be in the Brother driver so I did a comparison of the Brother files in my two Slackware installations. They were all identical, so then I thought, "Maybe the driver can't find the right glibc". So I checked and will you believe it? It wasn't there!

According to /var/lib/pkgtools/removed_packages (what a wonderfully useful directory that is!), it was removed on April 19th. I have absolutely no memory of this, but the 19th of the month is when I do my general update. Anyway, I reinstalled it and now the printer works.

PS: I just checked in packages and there was a 64-bit glibc update that day. Obviously, the 32-bit glibc got removed during that operation.

business_kid · 06-06-2022, 06:19 AM

Glibc is one of the 64+32 bit packages that Alien does as part of multilib, gcc being the other. If you upgraded with a standard slackware64 package, you'd lose the 32bit libs.

hazel · 06-06-2022, 06:35 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by business_kid

Glibc is one of the 64+32 bit packages that Alien does as part of multilib, gcc being the other. If you upgraded with a standard slackware64 package, you'd lose the 32bit libs.

Yes, that was exactly what happened. I see that now. I removed multilib because I was tired of having to cross off the 32-bit packages for the other libraries which I don't need. And you must admit a glibc update is a rare event.

business_kid · 06-06-2022, 11:07 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by hazel

Yes, that was exactly what happened. I see that now. I removed multilib because I was tired of having to cross off the 32-bit packages for the other libraries which I don't need. And you must admit a glibc update is a rare event.

. It's just the sort of thing I would do and have done. A fortune cookie once said:

Quote:

Originally Posted by BSD Fortunes

Experience teaches you to recognize a mistake when you've made it again.

Did they update glibc on Slackware-15.0? Did I miss that?

hazel · 06-06-2022, 11:45 AM

It was the aaa_glibc-solibs that got updated, not the whole glibc.