I have 4 machines running Slackware64-15.0, each connected through the wireless network to an old 32-bit Brother printer. All have worked great with Alien Bob's compat-32 packages. I agreed to "upgrade-all" when slackpkg asked 2 days ago and cups was upgraded on the first machine. I could no longer print on that machine. I blacklisted cups on the remaining machines pending investigation.

I have since been able to print with the upgraded cups package.

I've only used Slackware for about 2 years and am learning. I doubt that I'm the only user of these old Brother printers. I would really like to know what other users do to protect their systems' ability to print.

Thanks in advance.
Richard

On your computer where you recently installed the update for CUPS:

If you open CUPS config using your webbrowser i.e. http://localhost:631
Once there, click on Administration - Manage printers
See if your printer is still listed as installed

If not, make sure cupsd is running, open konsole and type, for example (no need to login as root or su):
ps aux | grep cups

You should see something like...

Thanks for the replies. I should have expanded on the actual problem. That particular machine refuses to start cupsd on boot. cupsd was not running at the time of the upgrade. When I tried to start it in my usual way I got error messages in response. Apparently, the command /usr/sbin/cupsd no longer works and has been replaced by /usr/sbin/cupsd -C /etc/cups/cupsd.conf -s /etc/cups/cups-files.conf Once I got cupsd running I was able to use a browser and eventually print a test page. Thanks again.

I just checked on an laptop here, where I've not yet updated CUPS.
So still running 2.3.3op2

And it starts cupsd exactly the same as I wrote above, so start-up command has not changed between these two versions

By any chance, is this an upgrade installation of 14.2 to 15.0, or a clean installation of 15.0?

This was an upgrade from 14.2 to 15.0. The upgrade went flawlessly. I'm prepared to do a clean install on this when needed. My concern is what happens to the other 3 machines the next time cups is upgraded for whatever reason. One was a clean install and two were upgrades from Current. Thanks, again.

I have been using Brother printers for several years on Slackware, currently I have a Brother HLL2320D. I have never had to install a full multilib to get the printer working. I followed the How To here
-->https://docs.slackware.com/howtos:ha...r_installation
I'm running the priter on a Slackware 15.0 64 bit system, and Slackware current 64 bit system. No issues with cups at all.

I simply +x /etc/rc.d/rc.cups and cups strats up at boot time.

@kel_en
As camorri wrote, follow that guide and make sure to chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.cups
That should be all you need to do, even after an update of cups later on.

Drivers might however be a different problem, I have no experience whatsoever with Brother printers since the late 1990's
I only use HP and/or Samsung laser printers my self.
But drivers doesn't seem to be the problem here...

On the PC with the upgrade from 14.2 -> 15.0
I would check if there's some "leftover" packages from 14.2 installation

In this case, cups, by using slackpkg (as su)
slackpkg search cups

You should see 4 results:
[inst] patches : cups-2.4.2-x86_64-1_slack15.0
[inst] slackware64 : cups-filters-1.28.11-x86_64-1
[inst] slackware64 : pycups-2.0.1-x86_64-6
[mask] slackware64 : cups-2.3.3op2-x86_64-1

In short, inst means it's the package currently installed (mask was the original package upon installation, in this case)

Of course, you could check manually as well, by using ls
Example:
ls /var/log/packages/cups*

So check this on the other machines as well.
As they were upgrades from current -> 15.0, and one being a full install (I hope) from scratch. They should be fine (if updated accordingly).

Just a side note... My 15.0 desktop is also from a current -> 15.0 upgrade. My laptops with 15.0 are clean installations.
And cups is working as expected, perfectly fine...