hi, ive had nothing but problems with my USB printer on Slackware 10 - its a HP Deskjet 5650. Ive downloaded the official HP drivers and installed them without a problem. i then added the printer and it printed the test page perfectly. however, whenver i try to print in a program (that recognizes the driver's location) i get nothing at all, and if i try to print using the command

lpr -P HPDeskjet5650 ./anyfile (HPDeskjet5650 being the printers entry)

it says:

Status Information, attempt 1 of 3:
sending job 'root@linux+107' to HPDeskjet5650@localhost
connecting to 'localhost', attempt 1
cannot open connection to localhost - No such file or directory
Make sure the remote host supports the LPD protocol
Waiting 10 seconds before retry

and continues to retry until it gives up. I cant get it to work at all on parallel port as i cant find an entry for parallel port in the printer set up. i need this printer for my uni work! help!!!


my webcam has never worked as i cant find drivers - it is USB also and is a Creative WebCam Pro.

thanks.

darksmiley; go here: http://www.linux-usb.org/section.html
open(expand) each section pertaining to ur devices for complete detailed information.

Have you tried using CUPS rather than lpr? I'll admit that I don't have a USB printer, but it may be worth a shot. Also, if you have not done so already, a visit to LinuxPrinting may be worthwhile. Good luck with it -- J.W.

He is probably using CUPS, lpr command works w/ cups.

Check out http://www.linuxprinting.org/ , it has tutorials and stuff on it too.
Stupid, but you-never-know answers: make sure CUPS is running, make sure localhost is defined in /etc/hosts (has line 127.0.0.1 localhost in it)

yea i am using cups - its usually the default

i think i am just having a lot of problems with Slackware coz its more advanced than Suse - but im getting better!! lol

but yea i tried checking /etc/hosts and the line is there. as for cups running that should be obvious but im not so sure!! i cant see it in the 'top' process list, and when i execute the command 'cupsd' in a terminal i get the line 'cupsd: Child exited with status 98!' which either means there is an error preventing cups from starting (in which case - help!!), or maybe its already running and 'status 98' indicates that. either way i dont know what my next option should be.

lsusb does report the printer by the way. are there any other commands i could use?

thanks!!

ok i may have got somewhere but it still isnt actually printing!! ok here is the progress ive made -

installed latest version of cups 1.1 as a slackware package
learnt how to run 'checkpc -f' which does seem to make a difference.
the 'lpr -P HPDeskjet5650 /test.test' command now does not complain, simply moving to the next command line.


however, the command still doesnt actually print the file, it only makes out everything is working fine. however, if i put in an incorrect printer name or filename it errors, which means that all that information is correct. ill check more on those sites but if anyone has any ideas feel free to let me know!

thanks

i dont know if anyone is still reading this thread but i just wanted to say in my moment of incredible linux-based happiness I have fixed my problem!! it took most of today with my m8, but i have successfully compiled my first kernel (an optimized 2.6.8.1) and printing works perfectly. it also does everything else i could ever want. linux rules every1 and dont let anyone tell you otherwise!

darksmiley; good job; keep up confidence & continue to forge ahead with LINUX. never had any doubts that u would succeed( which u did)! its just a matter of time & persistence. ok laddie upward & foward on u go!