[plug] printer problem

[Greg Mildenhall]

On Mon, 12 Apr 1999, Larry O'Reilly wrote:
> I can not print from a linux (Red Hat 5.1) box, I recently setup from cd,
> on a networked apple printer (do not know about non apple printers).
> /var/log/syslog says no null file or directory (what is the null
> file/directory?) and a new lpd which is (presumably) the lpd child process
> number.

The null file would be /dev/null. It's like a blackhole for data you don't
want. It should exist on every Linux system, must be a world-rwable, type
'c' file, and always (I believe) has device numbers 1,3.
For example:

gregm$ ls -l /dev/null
crw-rw-rw-   1 root     root       1,   3 May  6  1998 /dev/null

Do you have this exact file? If not, "mknod /dev/null c 1 3" will create
it. That said, I would imagine it shouldn't be stopping you from printing
completely, but far stranger things have happened.

-Greg Mildenhall