[ale] Printing Woes

[BruceG]

On Saturday 04 October 2003 23:35, griffisb at bellsouth.net wrote:
> This mini printserver thing has got me knocked. I did a modconf to make
> sure lp, parport and parport_pc is enabled. I do an lsmod, and see
> lp,parport_pc and parport. Did an apt-get install gs, pnm2ppa, magicfilter.
> Ran magicfilterconfig and selected pnm2ppa-720-color. Can't print from the
> Debian PC. Darn! I see /dev/lp0, but can't print.
>
> I jumped on a Windows machine and connected via Samba. I see the printer
> (hpdj722c) and can connect. Windows asked me to install the drivers for it,
> and chugged away. I printed a document to it, and "lpc status" shows lp:
>      queuing is enabled
>      printing is enabled
>      1 entry in spool area
>      hpdj722c is ready and printing
>

I know - bad form replying to myself. Got up this morning and there was - gasp 
- printout at the printer! Well, not so fast. It's not understandable at all 
- just a bunch of whatever. But something or other printed out.

Maybe it's a filter issue. DO you need X installed when printing graphics, or 
does the filter manage that? Would I need X (and Ghostview) only if I wanted 
to view graphics output? Anyway, if I can figure out how to remove print jobs 
from the queue (I queued up a 35 page PDF, what was I thinking) - I'll try a 
simple text file.

But something is seriously hacked, it takes a LONG time (10 minutes or much, 
much longer) to get a print job to start. Might be that tiny 16 meg memory or 
that inadequate 100Mhz CPU. At least I'll know what to do if I move it over 
to a faster PC - but I'd like to at least get decent printout before 
considering moving it.