Printer Problem [solved]

[oldnoob]

Just upgraded to 2006 from 10.1 where my desktop epson stylus printer worked fine.

But in 2006 some programs will print, some wont.

In System/configure you compter/printers all is ok and can print test page, Open Office 1 & 2 print fine as does Firefox.

 

 

But in System/configure your desktop/peripherals/printer, I get:

 

Unable to retrieve the printer List. Error message recieved from manager:

Connection to CUPS server failed. Check that the cups server is correctly installed and running. Error: host not found

 

Acrobat, KDE; Kontact, KWrite come up with a similar message:

 

An error occurred while retrieving the printer list:

Connection to CUPS server failed. Check that the cups server is correctly installed and running. Error: host not found

 

And there is no printer to choose from.

 

Scribus has printer: EpsonStylusC41SX and I can choose print options, but when I hit the print button, nothing comes out and no error message.

 

X printing Panel says EpsonStylusC41SX:Destination not available!

 

Any suggestions always appreciated

[Ixthusdan]

I know it's no fix, but I always use cups to configure the printer. In a browser, like firefox, go to "localhost:631". You'll be asked for a user and you should of course enter the root account information. Then, configure the printer. It is pretty self explanatory. I have seen this sort of odd behavior using Mandriva tools rather than cups. So, use cups.

[ianw1974]

The error messages you're hinting at when you go into Peripherals/Printers is usually something because of cups. Do this:

 

chkconfig --list cups

 

does it report "on" for runlevels 3 and 5 (as a minimum, but probably 2,3,4,5 are enabled). If not, then you need to do:

 

chkconfig cups on

 

to enable the service, and then:

 

service cups start

 

to get cups running. Then try going into Peripherals, Printers, and hopefully that will now be OK.

 

When you say "upgrade", did you upgrade or did you do a clean install? I always find clean installs much better, and a lot less problems than doing upgrades, even if they are from CD media or using urpmi sources.

[oldnoob]

Sorry for the late reply, sleep,work,etc

 

cups is on 2,3,4,5 and set to start at boot in system/services

 

when I go to localhost:631 the printer is already there (as default printer), all the options are available, and I can print test page, would it make a difference if I delete the printer from there and add it again?

 

I did do an upgarde not a clean install

[ianw1974]

You could try deleting and adding again. Also, if you're machine has plug and play OS enabled for OS in the BIOS, you'll need to turn this off, just in case printer detection isn't working correctly. I had printer problems with this enabled on my machine.

 

If it's OK in the BIOS, and detecting OK and some apps should print, not sure why it's not working for some apps and not others. Maybe delete, and add again in web interface if you prefer.

 

Also, do:

 

rpm -qa | grep cups

 

and see what is installed. This is the output from mine:

 

[ian@europa ~]$ rpm -qa | grep cups
cups-1.1.23-17.1.20060mdk
libgnomecups-1.0_1-0.2.0-1mdk
libgnomecups-0.2.0-1mdk
libcups2-1.1.23-17.1.20060mdk
cups-common-1.1.23-17.1.20060mdk

 

if you're not using gnome, then you can disregard the gnome related ones, but the others should exist.

[oldnoob]

Deleting and adding again in web browser didnt work, must have done something wrong, I couldn't set printer options and test page printed the postscript as text not image!

 

output is:

[root@localhost everyone]# rpm -qa | grep cups

libgnomecups-0.2.2-2mdk

cups-1.2.0-0.4876.1mdk

libgnomecups-1.0_1-0.2.2-2mdk

cups-common-1.2.0-0.4876.1mdk

libcups2-1.2.0-0.4876.1mdk

cups-drivers-2006-9mdk

gutenprint-cups-5.0.0-0.12mdk

 

Should I try removing and adding another way?

 

btw PnP is off

[ianw1974]

What does:

 

service cups status

 

give? Is it running? Also do:

 

netstat -tan

 

you should get one item listed as port 631. Is this showing?

[Ixthusdan]

Is ther a choice of drivers to use? I would be tempted to change drivers.

[AussieJohn]

From my post in another thread.

 

"Something to consider is that when you uninstall cups it will not necessarily also uninstall libcups. This means that you can have a libcups version that does not play well with the cups version you install. When you install cups, it sees a libcups there so it just goes ahead and installs without protest but can't actually work with it.

This seems to happen a lot with other applications as well. Nowdays whenever I uninstall a program, I go the extra distance and look to make sure the matching lib and other related packages such as devel are uninstalled as well so when a chosen application version is selected to be installed, then urpmi calls up the required lib packages as well that match the application.

I have also found that in Mandriva 2006 that cups cannot set up the printer properly (as it can do easily in Mandriva2005 and has done in almost every version prior to 2006) if it is allowed to select the printer automatically. It only worked when using the Manual selection of printer procedure. I use an Epson PhotoEX so it is a well known printer in the Linux world and not some ultra new or relatively unknown model."

 

 

Hope this is of some help to you.

 

Cheers. John.

[oldnoob]

Thank you all for your replies

 

I should point out at this stage that I realised that the version of 2006 that I downloaded says cooker as it starts to boot up, and If I had known I would not have downloaded it.

 

Having /home on a seperate partition, I decide to do a clean install, then did a urpmi --update / auto select, this has made no difference, configure your computer will see the printer and work, configure your desktop-same error as before. (plus I lost a few apps and java, but these can be replaced)

 

John, I had hoped that doing what I mentioned above would make sure that all the correct packages were installed, and yes 10.1 it went very smooth. Adding printer manually made no difference.

 

Ixthusdan, I wasnt aware of any drivers that I could use, and again because it worked so well in 10.1 I didnt think that it would be necessary, but of course I am a novice. And in configure your desktop/ peripherals i get a cups error, so I dont evevn get a choice to choose a driver like I can get in configure your computer.

 

Ianw1974, this is a printout of what you mentioned:

 

[root@localhost everyone]# service cups status

cupsd (pid 2325) is running...

[root@localhost everyone]# netstat -tan

Active Internet connections (servers and established)

Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address Stat

e

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:2049 0.0.0.0:* LIST

EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:32769 0.0.0.0:* LIST

EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:32770 0.0.0.0:* LIST

EN

tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:10026 0.0.0.0:* LIST

EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:139 0.0.0.0:* LIST

EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* LIST

EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LIST

EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:6000 0.0.0.0:* LIST EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* LIST EN

tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:5335 0.0.0.0:* LIST EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:631 0.0.0.0:* LIST EN

tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:25 0.0.0.0:* LIST EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:443 0.0.0.0:* LIST EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:7741 0.0.0.0:* LIST EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:445 0.0.0.0:* LIST EN

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:638 0.0.0.0:* LIST EN

tcp 0 0 192.168.0.2:51762 66.249.89.99:80 ESTA BLISHED

tcp 0 0 192.168.0.2:34870 66.249.89.104:80 ESTA BLISHED

 

 

I am really unsure as what to do next, If I can download some new ISO's I am willing to do another install, if it would make a differnce?

 

Thanks again all for your help!

[spinynorman]

I should point out at this stage that I realised that the version of 2006 that I downloaded says cooker as it starts to boot up, and If I had known I would not have downloaded it.

Moved to Cooker. :)

[ianw1974]

I'd be tempted to do a clean install of Mandriva 2006. Cooker at best is effectively classed as unstable. Whilst a fix might appear, it may not be for a while. I would suggest doing a clean install of Mandriva 2006 instead, or, if you like use Mandriva One LiveCD. This is just one CD, instead of 3 x CD's/1 x DVD for Mandriva 2006.

 

The Mandriva One can be used just as a LiveCD without install, so you can check/test to see if it works how you expect it to. If it works, then install it onto your system. LiveCD's are great, cos you can see if the distro will work for you, before actually installing and ending up with lots of probs.

 

I've never used this, I always use the Mandriva 2006 CD's/DVD so far, because Mandriva One is practically identical, however, it has a lot of the updates already applied that 2006 doesn't.

[scarecrow]

Judging from my distro (Arch Linux), it seems that a lot of people have issues with the 1.2.X versions of cups. I don't, because my printer is not connected to localhost, but to a remote ( ~ 10cm away ) machine which runs windoze ( ...sorry for that ).

Can you copypaste your hosts file here? (I believe it is is at /etc/hosts in Mandriva, but not sure because I'm not using it anymore).

[AussieJohn]

Doing a reinstall of 2006 a couple of days ago I found that by NOT selecting Cups and its associated packages during install and leaving the printer install until after logging into account, I found it much easier to install the printer.

When you use MCC ---------> Hardware ---------> Setup the Printer, just start the process and let it take its time (a long time).

It will seem to have frozen and be doing nothing. Eventually it will come up with a message saying something like "cannot connect to Cups server" and "say auto setup will be discontinued" and make some comment about Not selecting auto detection. I found that if I selected manual install at that point that I could setup my printer at no trouble at all. The problem with cups starts occuring from the driver included in Mandriva2006 right through the updates and even cooker so I am inclined to thinking that it is still a Mandriva stuffup rather than a cups one otherwise we would be hearing more complaints from other Linux users with different Linux OSs.

Since Gutenprint was introduced into Mandriva for the first time via 2006, and it interacts with cups, I am wondering if that has something to do with it.

 

Here is hoping 2007 eliminates these pesky problems.

 

Cheers. John.

[oldnoob]

The cooker version I downloaded was by mistake. I got it from a dodgy site and it was not labeled cooker. (lesson learnt)

 

I downloaded 2006 dvd from a mirror listed in the mandriva home page, 2gb and 12 hours later it had a bad md5sum, so I downloaded mandriva one from same mirror. Ran it as live cd and printer appeared ok, so I installed it and the problems I was having are gone.

 

By doing what I did it is hard to determine what was actually wrong, but what I did notice was that mandriva one uses cups 1.1, where the cooker version used cups 1.2, maybe that has something to do with it, maybe not.

 

Thanks all for your input!