cups problem in Mandrake 10.1 community

Strangely enough, in all this I have never had any trouble printing. If I want login to go faster, I turn off CUPS in the MCC - SERVICES so it won't start at boot time and then it boots normally but then of course I CAN'T print.

But if I leave CUPS to start up at boot time, I have to be patient about booting up but then I can print just fine.

So I be patient, because I need to print.

Thanks for sticking with me!

Carol

So maybe before the error starting CUPS was because it was already started?

Ah, I now know what the problem is!

You installed BOTH cups and LPR services... which is why you can still print when cups is not running.

These conflict with one another!

You can use Cups or LPR but not both.

Cups is a bit more versatile and can handle networked printers, including Windows printers on other machines. Lpr has limited networked printer support.

You'll need to decide on which you want to use and uninstall the other.

AH, you know what's weird? This morning my machine booted up fast, which surprised me as I had left cups on at boot up so it should have taken a long time and I was full of patience. And I couldn't print, so I thought maybe I had turned CUPS off last night. So I went into SERVICES to see if I had unchecked "on boot" and no, it was still checked, so presumably running. Weird.

So I went into system - configuration - configure your computer - hardware - printers - and it showed my printers as "disabled". So for lack of any other interesting choices, I hit "configure cups" and it said "starting network..." "restarting printing system..." and then it showed my printers as "enabled."

So I hit OK and left and then I could print.

I've done that twice in the last 20 mintues just to make sure I get it straight here and both times the printers were disabled, so somehow they are not staying enabled.

I went into "remove" to see if I had LPR installed and a search didn't return anything for "lpr" and nothing called LPR when I typed "print" either. Although somewhere recently I remember it being a choice among other "printing systems" but now I can't remember where...

I would prefer to keep CUPS if I have to choose, as it worked fine before.

Carol

To see if you have LPR installed type

rpm -qa | grep lpr

To remove it type

rpm -e `rpm -qa | grep lpr `

To check to see if cups is ok...

Open a console and SU to root... then

service cups stop
service cups start

and look for any errors which may appear.

At WORST you could delete cups altogether with

rpm -e `rpm -qa | grep cups `

then type this (CAREFULLY!)

rm -rf /etc/cups/*

This will obliterate cups...

Now you can re-install it...

urpmi cups

Then set up your printer again.

Alternately you can forgo the last step and go right to the MCC and set up printing again. It should automatically re-install whatever is needed.

I find that often when I'm into one of these "can't find the answer" corners, uninstalling and re-installing usually will fix the problem.

I'd delete BOTH cups and lpr then do the above.

OK, I'll give all that a shot.

Thanks so much for your patience and your help!!

You're golden!

Carol