*BSD News Article 81726


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From: crs@lanl.gov (Charlie Sorsby)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Printer quit working with 2.1.5 re-install
Date: 28 Oct 1996 23:46:50 GMT
Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory
Lines: 75
Message-ID: <553gla$84f@newshost.lanl.gov>
NNTP-Posting-Host: hamlet.lanl.gov

I re-installed FreeBSD because the vendor's installation on a
replacement disk gave too much space to W95 and had only one file
system for all of FreeBSD.  I prefer /, /var, /usr, and /home to be
on separate file systems.  Now my printer (a cheap HP DeskJet (600C)
won't work.  It had previously been working fine.  I hope the
following isn't too verbose but I tried to give all information that
I know.

First, I installed from the Walnut Creek 2.1.5 release CDROM.

Unfortunately, I didn't think to save the output from dmesg or an
old /var/log/messages file for comparison to see if something isn't
being done that had been.

I went through the same printer set-up sequence that I had done
before but nothing.  It (lpr, lpq, lpc) seems to think that it's
working but it isn't.  I'm using the same input filter and printcap
that I had done since nearly the beginning--certainly since I first
got it working normally, months ago.  It worked with both the
original disk and 2.1.0 and on the replacement disk with 2.1.5 as
you shipped it (once I installed the input filter, printcap, etc).

I rebuilt the kernel with lpt0 set to polled mode since I had a
problem with it being *very* slow before if left in interrupt
mode.

It doesn't appear to be a hardware problem.  If I send data directly
to lpt0 it comes out the printer and if I send it through my input
filter, it even comes out more or less normally.  E.g:

# pr file | /usr/local/libexec/hpif > /dev/lpt0

(Oddly, I can't do that with sudo, I must actually su to root to be
able to do it.)

So, I gather that the hardware is OK and that the problem is with
lpd and friends but... :(

PC% lpr sysinstall.debug
PC% lpq
no entries
PC% lpc status
lp:
	queuing is enabled
	printing is enabled
	no entries
	no daemon present
PC% 

But nothing comes out of the printer.  It doesn't even twitch.

The log file is unhelpful:

PC% cat /var/log/lp*
Oct 25 20:52:08 myname lpd[90]: restarted
Oct 25 21:16:23 quail lpd[93]: restarted
Oct 25 21:16:23 quail lpd[96]: /var/spool/lpd/deskjet: No such file or directory
Oct 26 09:36:43 quail lpd[95]: restarted
Oct 26 17:26:24 quail lpd[95]: restarted
Oct 26 18:09:42 quail lpd[95]: restarted
PC% 

The complaint about /var/spool/lpd/deskjet was resolved when I
added the spooling directory that I'd forgotten to replace.

Please let me know if I can provide any other information.

Any help will be sincerely appreciated.


-- 
Best,

Charlie "Older than dirt" Sorsby                         "I'm the NRA!"
       crs@swcp.com crs@hamlet.lanl.gov              Life Member since 1965