Seriously Miffed @ KDE!!! PLEASE HELP!!!

[Edwin]

I went back and didn't see that option. Where do I select this? In the drop box in the lower right of the wizard window, I saw CUPS and Generic Linux and a couple of others, but I didn't see a choice for CUPS + GIMP. Am I looking in the right place?

I don't think so. What you are referring to is the Print Manager screen in the Control Center. At the top is a list of already installed printers. Below that is a drop-box with a couple of options. This sets your *printserver*. Yes, this is Linux and it _is_ confusing, but even on a stand-alone machine you need a printserver. To make it less confusing think of this as a *printservice*. Just leave this box set to cups. Now start the wizard to set up your printer. Do this by clicking 'Add' in the toolbar and selecting 'printer/class'. If you don't have a toolbar right-click somewhere between the printers in the list and select 'Add Printer/Class' from the popup-menu.

Follow the wizard. At a certain point you have to select make and model of your printer. After that the wizard searches it's database for the driver. If it has more than one it will ask you to select one (here is where you select the 'cups+gimp') . If it has only one it will use that (without asking). If it has none it will inform you so.

Of course the things I said in my earlier post about starting cups first and the error_log still apply.

Good Luck,

- - Edwin
(by now wondering what was wrong with mechanical typewriters in the first place ;-)

[A. Jorge Garcia]

I just hauled my old Brother Typewritter out of the attic....

Regards,

[j.drake]

I went back and didn't see that option. Where do I select this? In the drop box in the lower right of the wizard window, I saw CUPS and Generic Linux and a couple of others, but I didn't see a choice for CUPS + GIMP. Am I looking in the right place?

I don't think so. What you are referring to is the Print Manager screen in the Control Center. At the top is a list of already installed printers. Below that is a drop-box with a couple of options. This sets your *printserver*. Yes, this is Linux and it _is_ confusing, but even on a stand-alone machine you need a printserver. To make it less confusing think of this as a *printservice*. Just leave this box set to cups. Now start the wizard to set up your printer. Do this by clicking 'Add' in the toolbar and selecting 'printer/class'. If you don't have a toolbar right-click somewhere between the printers in the list and select 'Add Printer/Class' from the popup-menu.

Follow the wizard. At a certain point you have to select make and model of your printer. After that the wizard searches it's database for the driver. If it has more than one it will ask you to select one (here is where you select the 'cups+gimp') . If it has only one it will use that (without asking). If it has none it will inform you so.

Of course the things I said in my earlier post about starting cups first and the error_log still apply.

Good Luck,

- - Edwin
(by now wondering what was wrong with mechanical typewriters in the first place

I never got it to work this way, despite several tries, but when I re-read Jorge's comment in the other thread, I tried K -> Knoppix -> Configure -> Configure Printers. It went smoothly and all is well (at least for the Epson). Thanks to all of you for your help. Now I just need to find a driver for my Brother all-in-one.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

dittos!

EDIT: IE, the Alleluias sung to Beethoven from the other thread....

[Edwin]

I never got it to work this way, despite several tries, but when I re-read Jorge's comment in the other thread, I tried K -> Knoppix -> Configure -> Configure Printers. It went smoothly and all is well

Hmm.... The two procedures seem identical to me, except that by going through the K-menu this module is displayed in it's own window and not in a frame in the Control Center. I can't imagine that there is duplicated code for these two methods. Great that it worked, but it is wierd.

Are we agreed then that its a KDE error?

Yes. Kate and Kwrite probably use the same mechanism to convert their internal format to PostScript. And something goes wrong there.

BTW, look what I just got as a reply from bugzilla:

sometimes you just need to wait some time for the print-filter to work (10min or more!)

This is ridiculous! What is it supposed to do in those 10 minutes? Run Seti@home? Disprove the Collatz conjecture? Sending secret messages to the whales?

OK, I just did the detailed debug in the CUPS server and got tons of lines in the error_log when printing my color text file (test.cc) to my color printer from KATE. KATE still crashes, I still get no hardcopy, I still have to kill the KATE process and I get a ton of lines starting with "d" or "D" in the error_log that don't help me at all....

If I have led you to believe that turning on this tool would somehow enable your printing I apologize. All this tool does is give some insight on what is going on in CUPS's internals. I never expected it to get this far, somehow guessing that Kate crashed before passing her output to CUPS. I am more than willing to have a look at your error log. I want to report this at Bugzilla on the KDE site. And having been on the recieving end of bug-reports I know that the more detail the better. So if you are willing to go through the motions one more time...

Boot from CD, start CUPS if necessary, install printer and _then_ set the log-level to 'Debug Information'. And please don't choose 'Detailed Debugging': that output is so enormous it can kill a whale.
Do whatever you have to do to save the error_log and send as a attachment to:

<evanmaastrigt> <wanadoo> <nl>

My mailbox is relatively spam-free and I intend to keep it that way. So in the above address remove spaces, greater- and lesser than chars, and insert an "at" and a "dot" char at the right place.

And if paradocs is reading this and is willing to go through this: send me your error_log as well. Might help a lot actually.

Regards,

- - Edwin

PS: sorry for not responding earlier, but running on 115 Volts makes my computer a wee bit slow ;-)

[A. Jorge Garcia]

Edwin:
Sorry I wasn't clear! No, you did not lead me to believe that the debug setting would be a fix. What I meant to say was: for all those 1000's of debug lines, I'm no closer to a solution.

Also, do you really want me to email you that error_log? Have you been able to make head or tail of one of htese huge error_logs before? Are you one of the developers, then?

All:
Anyway, isn't that bugzilla report ridiculous! I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that! Talk about unreliable, if it were true.

BTW, this must be some sort of record - we have nearly 5 pages in this one thread already! Now, if I post the error_log debug setting, we'll have at least 10 more....

Regards,

[Edwin]

Also, do you really want me to email you that error_log? Have you been able to make head or tail of one of htese huge error_logs before? Are you one of the developers, then?

Yes, I do like to have a look at that error_log, and no, I am not one of the developers. I can't garanty anything of course but I have been doing some reading on CUPS. There are a lot good resources out there, including tutorials on how to read that error_log. Those were in German, but I can read that good enough. Just for fun I simulated a few errors (printing to non-existent printers, mucking up a PostScript file and then printing it) and I could spot the errors. And I noticed a couple of threads on the German Knoppix forum describing the sort of problem you have.

"If you never shoot, you will always miss" is a saying in my country. So, email me that file, I'll have a shot at it, if I can't locate the error it will still help with a bug report: I'll just put in on a website and include a link to it.

Any way, if I have to choose between figuring out a 1000-line Linux error_log and a 1000-line VBasic program I'll take the first option anytime :-)

BTW, this must be some sort of record - we have nearly 5 pages in this one thread already! :

Let's keep it running; we could win the price for the longest thread on this forum: a free copy of Knoppix ;-)

Regards,

- - Edwin

[j.drake]

I never got it to work this way, despite several tries, but when I re-read Jorge's comment in the other thread, I tried K -> Knoppix -> Configure -> Configure Printers. It went smoothly and all is well

Hmm.... The two procedures seem identical to me, except that by going through the K-menu this module is displayed in it's own window and not in a frame in the Control Center. I can't imagine that there is duplicated code for these two methods. Great that it worked, but it is wierd.

I'm with you.

A couple of clarifications are in order. First, I did still do the root login and CUPS restart prior to going through the K menu, but I did this only because I tried it going through the shell to the control center first, and it didn't work, and I looged in root and restarted CUPS and tried it again, and it still didn't work, and then I tried going through K and it did work. I didn't have time to reboot and see it it would set up without the root login and CUPS restart. Second, this time around I was using the 7-26-03 download. I doubt that this made a difference, as I initially had the same problem in the control center, but it is possible that the newer release might have helped.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter to me as long as I can print, but I wanted to clarify in case it might help someone else.

[A. Jorge Garcia]

OK, I'll try the debug error_log again tomorrow I hope. I'll email you if I get the time to play....

TIA,

[j.drake]

Now I just need to find a driver for my Brother all-in-one.

Success I got printed output from my Brother MFC-6800 using the HL-730 driver already defined in Knoppix. It's a foomatic driver (whatever the H that means). Thanks for the link, Edwin.

Also, I confirmed that I DO NOT have to set up a root password or restart CUPS to set up either printer, provided that I go via <K> <configure><configure printers> as Jorge suggested. Thanks, Jorge!

If things keep going well, I may have to look up how to do the HD installation with LILO.