ok, Ive spent most of this day reading all about cups or lpd and pdq and blah blah blah, and they all tell you the commands that you use for printing or verifying the queve or whatever, but how do I set up my printer.
ok, this is what i did, i downloaded the newest realeased of cups, like some of you have recomended in other posts to other user, i followed the instructions and got it installed, then i started the daemon. now what? how do in install the printer, the drivers.... in so lost rigth now... please help?

If you have installed the cups binary, and you say it is running, then use your web browser to access the administration page (http://localhost:631). Once you acess it, you can add, delete, and manage printers.

If your printer is not found && you have not installed the latest cups release under the same location the Slackware package installs, then you are going to have to either:

1. use "explodepkg cups-drivers-all-0.3.6-i386-1.tgz" (let's say you created a directory /tmp/cups to explode the packages, and you are currently in it) and copy the /tmp/cups/usr/share/cups to /<your_cups_home>/share, and /tmp/cups/var/cups to /var/<your_cups_home>.

2. Find and download the latest cups' drivers, and install with the same prefix as your cups installation (i.e. /<your_cups_home>). The additional drivers, should reside somewhere under /<your_cups_home>/share/cups (<- this is the location where the drivers mostlikely will go)

Hope this helps.

/edit: clarified

hey cool,
I havent been able to try what you said cause the computer im having the problem with is at work. Anyways, I did the installation using the regular old way, ./configure, make and make install. But even after doing that the administration web page didn't work. Ill try againg tomorrow, im not giving up, but do I have to do something else so that I can use the web browser?

thaks againg..

Make sure the daemon is running (i.e "ps ax | grep cupsd | grep -v grep" should return something). Within the source directory you used to compile your cups, you should find a startup script you can copy to /etc/rc.d to start and stop the daemon ( I believe it is within its doc subdirectory but I am not 100% sure). Once you make sure it is running, then you can use your browser to acess the web administration tool for cups.


GL

You can also use the kde control center printer admin to add printers with cups.

ok, finally had time to do the printer setup. Got the browser working, I had to disable the proxy settings to be able to see the configuration page. Now the problem is that the printer does not want to print. this is how I configured my printer, its a HP Deskjet 970Cse:

name: Deskjet_970
location: /dev/lp0

device: parallel port #1 (hewllet-packard deskjet 970c)
make: HP

model: HP DeskJet 900 series CUPS+GIMP-print v4.2.1 (en)


this is what cups shows:

Description: HP 970Cse
Location: /dev/lp0
Printer State: idle, accepting jobs.
Device URl: parallel:/dev/lp0

but when i try to print a test page... nothing happens.
Then when I go to the it says that the job has been cancelled.

Help please, Im lost...

What version of cups do you have installed?

its cups 1.1.15,
downloaded last week

Hi figadiablo - I've been trying for several weeks to get my printer (Epson C80) to work in Slack 8.1, and still no luck.

After installing, and uninstalling, then reinstalling CUPS, Gimp-Print, and Apsfilter at least 8 times each with no progress, I'm about ready to give up. The printer daemon is running, and you can see the printer online with cat /proc/devices, but nothing comes out of the printer. The lights don't even blink, and there are no noises whatsoever. This printer works just fine under Mandrake 8.2 with CUPS, foomatic, and Gimp-Print.

I do like Slack and have all the other problems worked out, but I must be able to print. If you should find the solution either here, or elsewhere, please be sure to post back about it because like you, I'm desperate.

With cups-1.1.15 you need to download ESP Ghostscript as well, there used to be a version included in cups but from 1.1.15 it was made into a seperate package.
http://www.cups.org/ghostscript.html

Got mine going using the default Apsfilter package!

It turned out to be nothing more than the fact that the driver I was choosing (Epson C80) from the list wasn't actually compiled into the program, so nothing came out of the printer. After experimenting for a while with other driver choices, I found one that works very well. Now that I know what was wrong, I'm ready to find one geared more specifically toward my printer.

Hope you get yours going, figadiablo. Your problem sounds exactly like mine, so you might try some of the other driver choices. Good luck...

I'm glad to hear that, Ill definitely try that.
Thanks for the help.

CUPS came with the 4 disc set of release 8.1. It installed with the base packages and works without any fiddling. It's definitely worth paying for the CD's. You'll support the Slackware people and won't have the problems that have been reported for the iso download. Just my .02 cents.

I always used APSfilter that comes by default with Slack, and its only a matter of choosing a right driver for your printer and it works without problems, so in future i suggest you try APSfilter since it already comes with Slack beforee you go on to CUPS.
Hope that helps
-NSKL

does Slack 8.1 comes with APSfilter? I'm gonna haver to give a better look.