[lug] Small printer problem

[David Outteridge]

I have never really found out about configuring printers so this may
not be what you want or need:-) But - I had the same problem, as close
as I can remember.  In my case it really was a lack of an EOF.  Have
you tried printing files of different sizes or printing the same file
twice?  My recollection is that the printer buffer would need to to be
full (or something) before it would be printed.  Any extra data (such
as two lines at the end of a file) would then be at the beginning of
the buffer, and they would sit there until either the buffer was
filled with something else, or the printer was turned off (that
doesn't sound right, but maybe it is), or the computer was turned off
with the printer left on, or the printer filter was changed so that an
EOF followed every job - ahah!

As I wrote at the beginning, I know very little about setting up
printers (I should welcome a talk at a monthly meeting about this) so
I am reduced to doing it Microsoft style; which the Linux community,
RedHat anyway, seems to be intent on copying mindlessly.  Thus, here
is how I did it under RedHat 6.0.

* Log in as root
* Start Gnome
* Select System from the menu
* Select Control Panel from the menu
* Start the Printer Configuration tool from the menu
* Select the appropriate printer entry
* Select Edit via a button
* Select Input Filter via a button
* Find the entry "Send EOF after job to eject page?"
* Toggle it on
* Clean up
* You may have to re-boot or restart a daemon or something.

There must be a better way.

dajo


  Power cycling the printer ejects the page, but the next print out will still
  hang at the last line or two.
  
  Also... if I leave the unfinished page in the printer and try another print,
  the printer will finish the previous doc, eject it, print the next document
  and then hang on the last two lines of the last page again... it's really
  like the printer just isn't getting the "OK I'm done sending you data" from
  the server.  It works great when I hook it directly to my Win98 box, so I
  don't think it's printer failure either.
  
  I've included the sh: tag on the printer definition in printcap to suppress
  the header.  Is there anything else that I need to do like that?
  
  -----Original Message-----
  From: Rob Riggs [mailto:rob at pangalactic.org]
  Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 1999 2:41 PM
  To: lug at lug.boulder.co.us
  Subject: Re: [lug] Small printer problem
  
  
  "Harris, James A (Jim)" wrote:
  > 
  > is this:  I'll send a job and the printer will print everything but the
  last
  > two lines, then it just hangs.  It's almost like the printer is waiting
  for
  ...
  > not help.  What's really weird is this:  the very very first file I send
  > after a reboot will print fine, but everyone after that hangs in this way.
  
  Does power-cycling the printer fix the problem? You say that you've set the
  printer up to take raw output. Is it possible that lpr is trying to print
  a burst page after the job is done and confusing the printer?
  
  -- 
  Rob Riggs
  Technical Staff
  Tummy.com, Ltd.
  http://www.tummy.com/