I want to thank everyone who helped me get printing under CUPS up on my Slack Server. That was a hurdle that had been hanging in my head for quite some time...

anyway, I felt so confident after getting slack setup as my server at home, I'm trying to get my work laptop running it. All is well except printing (of course). I followed the same routine as I did for the server, and CUPS has been installed just fine. The only problem is that my printer is not detected. (By the way, the difference with this install on the laptop is I used the 'usb.i' kernel instead of the 'bare.i' kernel (bare.i was used on the server)). I tried hooking the printer up through the parallel port, but after uncommenting the parallel printing sections of rc.modules, I get an error on boot that 'the device or resource is busy' when loading the parallel script/modules. Back to USB, when installing in CUPS, I tell it to look at USB Printer #1, but it doesn't find anything there. I get an error to the effect of "/dev/usb/lp0: unable to write, no such device". I don't remember the command/string to run in order to see what devices are installed on usb.

My USB keyboard and mouse are working fine, and on boot I see my USB CDRW drive is detected also, so that should mean the correct USB Hub is loaded, right?

cat /proc/bus/usb/devices

Should show your devices. Also check if usb printer support is enabled in the kernel. Does Slackware support hotplugging of usb devices? If not the printer has to be connected to the computer at boot time and it has to be switched on. Check dmesg if you just booted or your kernel logfile if the machine was on for a while (dmesg is a ringbuffer). You should see a line there that shows your printer name and or manufacturer.

You should find something like this:

kernel: Manufacturer: EPSON
kernel: Product: USB Printer

vi /etc/printcap

Printcap has all the info on the printer spoolers. First do what dazk said: find if your printer is even detected. Then install the correct driver packages, running the right script. That should add your printer to the /etc/printcap file.

I doubt that the kernel has usb printing enabled although it does have the usb controller loaded. I loaded the module 'printer' on startup, but I guess that's not enough? Do I need to compile a new kernel? If so, I haven't had much luck doing that. The new kernel boots, but I always end up with module errors all over the place with a custom kernel. What do you guys suggest? Do you know what I might have done wrong to mess up modules with a custom kernel? Is there a way to get the usb printer working without usb printing enabled on the kernel level?

edit: dmesg was able to show me the following couple things I thought might help in the diagnosis:

printer.c: V0.8: USB Printer Device Class driver
(and down quite a ways)
lp: driver loaded but no device found

Hmm, are you sure your printer is switched on and properly connected since usually loading the module should do the trick. Do you have a very special printer? Try searching google for something containing your printer name and linux. Maybe there is another problem with your printer. Maybe it's not a normal usb printer.

About your module problems, I'm not quite sure. Did you do a make modules ; make modules_install? If so what are the problems? Unresolved Symbols?

the usb printer works fine in Mandrake 9, and works perfectly in parallel on my Slackware server at home. It's an Epson C62, which the C60 drivers in CUPS work well with it.

I compared 'dmesg' results on my laptop with my server and the laptop doesn't show detecting the printer, while me server identifies it and everything. I even tried hooking the printer directly to my laptop through USB, but it didn't change anything. Do you think I'm loading the wrong USB Hub? When I tried loading other hubs (through rc.modules) I got insmod errors, but don't remember exactly what they were.

I have done 'make modules' and 'make modules_install', but for some reason it never can find the modules when using a custom kernel. Should I manually copy the modules folder to somewhere after setting up the new kernel?

I'm not the USB guru myself but afaic if the hub works and usb printing also it *sould* work. Obviously it doesn't for you. I never tried usb printing with modules though.

Regarding your kenrel mods, you have to reboot with the new kernel. On reboot there should be a script that calculates module dependendcies for the new kernel. That should be it. The modules get copied to the right location if you do modules_install. You could also try a depmod -a if the modules can't be found.

Other than that, I've no idea myself.

I posted my kernel compile problems here

another thing to add is Windows 2000 detected the printer on this laptop, so it looks like it's not a printer problem, but a problem with my config.

it works if I enable usb printing and all the usb hubs in the kernel... I honestly don't know which one exactly fixed it, but it works with all that enabled.... thank you so much for your help! I'm sorry I've been so difficult to work with!