Printer Hell

[sakiZ]

In trying to update printer drivers, I have broken printing on my Debian Knoppix 3.7 install. Arrgh!

I seem to have made some headway in getting associated cups files reinstalled. But now I keep getting this error message

" Depends: cupsys-driver-gimpprint (=4.2.7-10) but 5.0.0-3 is to be installed "

when I try to reinstall the 4.2.7-10 gimpprint driver.

How do I fix this?

I have even extracted a backup made a few weeks ago. I could if necessary copy the necessary files and directories from the backup.

SakiZ

[sakiZ]

Ok, after purging my system of CUPS and reinstalling it, the CUPS server is running

When I do "cupsd" from a Konsole, I get no error messages.

It lets me install a driver for the printer, but it is still not printing.

But the error log in Var/log/ gives me this:

E [30/Nov/2006:09:25:16 -0500] cupsdAddCert: Unable to create certificate file /var/run/cups/certs/0 - No such file or directory

So something still isn't kosher.

Any ideas from the Linux gurus out there?

SakiZ

[rusty]

While we're waiting for the gurus to arrive, I was wondering what kind of printer you have (Parallel, USB etc) and a bit more about your setup - are you running from a hard drive installation or from the 3.7 Live CD?

Knowing the kernel your running might also be helpful.

I'm not sure the cert message is responsible for your inability to print. When I sam your original post I was going to suggest reinstalling cupsys and cupsys-driver-gimpprint from unstable (apt-get -t unstable install cupsys-......) But since you've done that and can get the daemon running, that might not help either.

[sakiZ]

OK, this was a lot harder doing than what I am going to say. Basically I, purged all printer related drivers. Then I installed version 1.1.23 of cupsys and everything else that had been v. 1.25.

This required downloading a deb of cupsys 1.1.23 file from Debian and following numerous error messages in package manager that kept it from installing. I'd get a message saying this file was preventing the downgrade, so then I'd have to remove that and it would in turn remove other files. I did this numerous times.

I ended up with a system completely stripped of all printing files.

Then I could install cupsys 1.1.23. After that, the gimp drivers, foomatic, etc. It's a downgraded printing system that a pure Debian Sarge system uses.

At 11:30 last night I was still fiddling with the system trying to get it to print. I was not getting anything to print after all that.

This morning I tried again, and lo and behold the printer started printing gibberish. I checked and the printer was installed as a raw printer. Hmm, I selected the gimp drivers.....again! It took and.................drum roll..............I can print now.

The printer is an Epson C80 parallel port. I'm using the venerable 2.4.27 kernel.

There is one last item. I get an error message when I do "cupsd" : cupsd: Child exited with status 98!

But, like I say, I can print now. Is my error message critical? Why am I getting it? How do I fix that?

Or, should I leave well enough alone at this point?

SakiZ

[rusty]

I think the child process error means that cupsd is already running, you can confirm this by opening a shell and typing: ps-A|grep cupsd

Otherwise , sound like your all set.

[sakiZ]

ps -A|grep cupsd shows that all is well.

Thanks! Whew. I don't want to go through that again.

SakiZ