Print jobs not printing thru cups

[akonstam at trinity.edu]

On Mon, Sep 05, 2005 at 11:02:50PM +0800, Michael Lai wrote:
> akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
> 
> >I have to apologize to you. I was so set on the answer I did not pay
> >enough attention to your question. Now I see that you printer is not a
> >network printer but locally attached to you FC machine. You indicate
> >that you can't print from your Windows machine. I assume the MS Word
> >or Notepad were on a different machine that is running Windows. So as
> >I understand it you want to use the FC machine as a print-server for
> >your Windows machine. Are you using samba to do the printing? Can you
> >print to the HP Laserjet 1300 from the FC machine?
> >
> >I am not at all sure how print-service from  a FC machine is made
> >available to a Windows machine. If I had realized that was what you
> >were doing I should have shut up. But I still think the answers to my
> >questions would be helpful.
> > 
> >
> 
> No problem akonstam.  I appreciate that you are trying to help.  Here is 
> my current setup.  I have three printers connected to my FC machine:
> 
> HP PSC 2210 (via usb - /dev/usb/lp0)
> HP LaserJet 1300 (via usb - /dev/usb/lp1)
> HP LaserJet 4L (via parallel - /dev/lp0)
> 
> These printers are shared through samba.  Here is printer section of my 
> samba config:
> 
> [printers]
>        comment = All Printers
>        path = /var/spool/samba
>        browseable = yes
>        printing=cups
>        public = yes
>        guest ok = yes
>        printable = yes
> 
> Majority of the time, my colleagues were using the LaserJet1300 as the 
> default printer (through Windows XP).  For the first several weeks, 
> print jobs were processed fine but then about a week ago, I noticed a 
> degradation in the printing process.  It started with some print jobs 
> would not process the first time and have to press print a second or 
> third time before the print job would go through.  Later, I found that 
> some Word documents would print but others wouldn't.  That really 
> stomped me.  Yet, if I connect the printer locally to my Windows 
> desktop, those docs that wouldn't print before would print now.
> 
> Now, the situation has worsened to the point where none of the documents 
> are printing now.  When I try to print through the PSC 2210 printer, it 
> would print several pages of funny characters when there the document 
> has only page.  The only reliable printer that I can print from now is 
> the LaserJet 4L.  I am really at a loss on how to fix this as I am no 
> cups expert.  I am tempted to totally uninstall cups and reinstall it 
> again.  I would be happy to supply any additional information that you 
> need to analyze this problem.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
Well to start with since you are using HP printers is to install the
updated cups printer drivers that are called HPLIP and can be gotten
from  the Sourceforge site:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/hpinkjet/

I really have minimal experience doing samba printing to cups
configured printers on a FC4 system but these device drivers might
help. The problem is these drivers are incompatible with
system-config-printer so you are committed to using cups with these
drivers.

In principal if you had cups printing support on the Windows machine
I would  assume that samba printing would not be needed,  but I am just
guessing and I don't want to lead you astray.
-- 


=======================================================================
You can't run away forever,
But there's nothing wrong with getting a good head start.
		-- Jim Steinman, "Rock and Roll Dreams Come Through"
-------------------------------------------
Aaron Konstam
Computer Science
Trinity University
telephone: (210)-999-7484