CUPS: "unable to contact server!"
 

I tried to configure a printer over my network but couldn't figure out what the correct path was ... so I tried what I thought might be right, and now CUPS isn't working. lpr, lpq, and all other lp* commands return the error message "unable to contact server!" on the local machine.

The other symptom is that CUPS starts up fine but fails on shutdown.

How can I fix this?

Thanks in advance.

When a service starts up fine but fails on shutdown it usual means the service was never running at all or was running with errors. Usually this points to a problem in the configuration files. What exactly that problem is is hard to say from the information you've given. Can you give more info as to how you configured cups exactly?

Actually, I figured it out. The client machine kept trying to print the test files I requested after configuring the printer as a remote printer, but with an incorrect path, so it tied up the server. What's weird is that it kept doing this even though both machines were shut down and booted up several times over a space of several days. Anyway, I killed the jobs and that freed the server up.

Problem solved.

Now back to Samba...

(Thanks for the try, though!)