Problems with printing

Warren Block wblock at wonkity.com
Thu Apr 22 22:23:37 UTC 2010


On Thu, 22 Apr 2010, Frank Wi?mann wrote:

> "chkprintcap -d -f /etc/printcap" exits with no error message.

That -d may have now changed things, but okay.

> "lpc status lp" gives that:
>
> lp:
>        queuing is enabled
>        printing is enabled
>        no entries in spool area
>        printer idle

That's good.  Try sending a short test file to the printer, like
ls -lh | lpr

("lp" is the default, so "-Plp" is not needed.)

Watch the printer display to see if it receives a job.  If the printer 
doesn't print, check the status with lpc again.  Oh, and you might want 
to check that the printer is set to Auto personality so it'll accept all 
types of print jobs.

>> Don't know, but I set group and owner to daemon:daemon.  Incidentally, 
>
> Which directories do you include in "daemon:daemon"?

The spool dir, but 'chown -R daemon:daemon /var/spool/lpd' should be all 
right, too.

>> using the first name of the printer (lp) for the spooldir would make more 
>> sense to me.
>
> I did change that but it seems not to have any effect. I also took my user in 
> the groups "daemon" and "operator" but that didn't help, too.

You should not be a member of the daemon group; operator is fine.  And 
also beware of changing multiple settings at the same time.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA


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