Printer Stopped Working (SOLVED)

[Rick Stevens]

On 02/11/2010 01:05 PM, Micros50 wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-02-11 at 12:01 -0800, Rick Stevens wrote:
>> On 02/11/2010 10:40 AM, Micros50 wrote:
>>> On Wed, 2010-02-10 at 15:51 -0800, Rick Stevens wrote:
>>>> On 02/10/2010 12:38 PM, Micros50 wrote:
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>>
>>>>> I have a Hewlett Packard B209 printer connected via wireless ethernet to
>>>>> my LAN. For the past several months everything was working fine. At
>>>>> l;east 3 different computers running Fedora 11 and 12 had no problems
>>>>> seeing the networked printer and printing to it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Then all of a sudden everything went kaputz. I think it happened after a
>>>>> recent routine upgrade via YUM. All of a sudden none of my computers can
>>>>> access the printer. It seems to show up as a valid networked printer
>>>>> but, I cannot get it to print. If I send a document to the printer I get
>>>>> the following message.
>>>>>
>>>>> "/usr/lib/cups/filter/hpcups failed"
>>>>>
>>>>> I cannot even access any administrative functions top pause or restart
>>>>> the printer, nor can I print a test page. I disabled my firewall and
>>>>> SELinux but unto no avail. It just sits there dumb, like it's there but
>>>>> not there. Up to a couple days ago it was working flawlessly.
>>>>>
>>>>> I attached a copy of my cupsd.conf file. If any further diagnostics are
>>>>> needed I can furnish those as well.
>>>>>
>>>>> Any and all help appreciated. Thanks in advance...
>>>>
>>>> First, try to ping your printer, both by name and by IP address.  If
>>>> you can ping via IP but not name, then you may be affected by:
>>>>
>>>> There was an update to both F11 and F12 that can affect you if you are
>>>> running BIND (named) on your machine.  It has to do with the dnssec-conf
>>>> RPM.  Do an "rpm -q dnssec-conf".  If you get a result that shows either
>>>>
>>>> 	1.21-3.fc11
>>>> 	1.21-7.fc12
>>>>
>>>> then "yum downgrade dnssec-conf" and then "service named restart".
>>>> Details are here:
>>>>
>>>
>>> Okay... I can ping the printer via it's ip address. I cannot ping by
>>> name and, I am not running bind nor is dnssec-conf installed. This
>>> problem is also network wide because none of my machines can print
>>> anything anymore.  I still get the message
>>>
>>> "paused /usr/lib/cups/filter/hpcups failed"
>>>
>>> And CUPS administration won't let me unpause the printer nor carry out
>>> any administrative function.
>>
>> I can only think of two possibilities, a buggered hpijs RPM or a
>> conflict in the hplip stuff (if installed).  Make sure they're updated.
>>
>> Try to force an unpause via:
>>
>> 	cupsenable [printername]
>> 	cupsaccept [printername]
>>
>>
> Okay, I seemed to have solved the problem, although I am still not
> certain what the cause of the problem was, at least I got bnetwork
> printing up and running again.
>
> What I did was to open the CUPS configuration dialog and delete the
> printer. Then I let CUPS  discover what printers I have on the network.
> Then I re-installed the printer and viola... it is printing again. I had
> to do this on each computer and so far...(knock on wood) everything
> seems to be back to normal.
>
> I have no idea why this happened. In any event I want to thank Rick&
> Ted for the help and suggestions which I have made note of in the event
> of any future printing problems.
>
> meanwhile I'll chalk this one up as some sort of unidentified glitch.

Entirely possible that the ppd file or the identification URL for the
printer changed.  My guess is a hal or udev update buggered things.

I've had locally-connected (e.g. USB) printers go offline after a hal
update.  I simply added them again and the new definitions worked a
treat.  The old definitions remained, however, and THOSE iterations of
the printers were marked as "unplugged or turned off".  Weird.  So, I
just deleted the old iterations and we're back to normal.

I don't recall this affecting network printing, but my printers are all
directly connected to my server and the network nodes print to the
server's queues, not directly to the printers.

Anyway, glad you got it sorted and sorry I wasn't more help.
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer                      ricks at nerd.com -
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