[ale] Parallel Port Hunting

[John Mills]

ALErs -

On Sun, 3 Sep 2006, Dow Hurst wrote:

> John,
> We will need to you give us some history (think medical history a doctor
> wants) to help diagnose the problem.

More symptoms, if not more history:

1. System is SuSE-9.3 on brand-X laptop.

2. Some apps print successfully: 'acroread' and 'Firefox' can hit both the 
inkjet on the USB and the Okipage on the parallel port. 'acroread' gives 
as its printer '/usr/bin/lp'.

3. Some apps can't print to either port: OpenOffice and some console
commands ('enscript'). OpenOffice claims as its printer
'CUPS:<printer_name>'.

4. BUT I _can_ hit the printers with other console commands:
 '$ man -t enscript | lp -d okipage4w' worked.

5. Print jobs that fail leave files in '/var/spool/cups/': 'c00010'

6. Print jobs that succeed create files in '/var/spool/cups' that are 
removed when the job terminates: 'c00010-001'

(Those are two actual cases, by the way. The 'c00010' file was created on 
an earlier printing attempt, by a different file and different app.)

>  What has been installed/updated/changed on the Linux install on the
> laptop from the last time printing worked until now?

I did try to install Gutenprint, but had printing problems before. I have 
added, deleted, and configured several printers in attempts to solve the 
problem. I now get some failures when I attempt to store new 
configurations. The USB printer is unchanged over this saga, and seems 
affected by the same problem.

Any ideas?

TIA.
 - Mills