printer woes

[Warren Block]

On Wed, 5 Mar 2014, Gary Aitken wrote:

> Returned from being out a month, booted up, turned on printers...
>
> printers are sitting on network at dedicated ip addrs.
>
> When I try to print something from gimp using gutenprint,
> it generates the print data and control files in the spool directory
> (cf..., df...)
> However, the printer never wakes up and does anything.
> lpd is running, and the lock file indicates the pid of one of the lpd processes
> There is an errs.xxxxxx file which is empty (how is this used??)
>
> status file has a message from when I set it and it never seems to change
>
> Any ideas why the lpd process isn't doing anything?

At a guess, because the CUPS lpr is not submitting jobs to it?  What 
does 'lpc status all' say?

> cups is installed and cupsd is running,
> although it's my understanding gutenprint from gimp bypasses cups;
> nothing shows up in the cups queues, no surprise there.
>
> The gutenprint dialog shows three printers:
>  Printer
>  HP 8500
>  epson3880
> Attempting to print to the hp or epson fails;
> printing to Printer prints fine to the hp8500,
> which is the first printer listed in /etc/printcap

Use the Gutenprint "Setup Printer" button to configure how the job is 
sent.  For base lpr/lpd, use "Custom Command" with
"/usr/bin/lpr -Pepson3880", no space after the -P.  The path to lpr is 
important because CUPS has an alternate version.