[plug] printer newbie question

[Craig Ringer]

Alan Graham wrote:
> I haven't seen any better qualified replies, so I'll give it a go.  The
> first problem you have is that it's a usb printer.  /dev/lp0 is the
> device address of the parallel printer port.  To find the address given
> to your usb printer, you need to have a look in your syslog out put.  I
> can't rmember the default syslog file for RH 7.3 (/var/log/messages ?),
> but you can find out by looking at /etc/syslogd.conf.  If you can't find
> it there then make sure the USB printer is switched on and connected,
> reboot, and have a look at the output of dmesg.  Try 'dmesg | grep usb'
> 
> If you don't get any output from dmesg, or there's nothing in the
> syslog, then you don't have usb support in the kernel and you'll have to
> compile it in.

... or its built as a module and not being loaded - try "modprobe uhci" 
or "modprobe usb-uhci". There's also a USB printer module that you'll 
need to load - I have the funny feeling its called "printer" but I can't 
remember, nor can I presently check.

You may also need to set usbdevfs to mount on /dev/usb if it isn't 
automatically. I can't help you there sorry, I'm still mostly in the 
dark ages of PS/2 and all my USB stuff works via HID and the input core 
in /dev/input using devfs :-)

> BTW, consider installing cups and gimp-print (remove lpd, bsd-lpd
> first), as it's a lot easier in the long run to administer printers with
> cups.

Hmm... I've been using CUPS at work and have found it good, but far from 
solid. The web front end sometimes crashes out and kills cupsd ; certain 
ppds kill it dead ; setting the default printer seems to only work using 
"lpadmin", etc. OTOH this is the version of CUPS in deb. woody which is 
a bit old now.