[lug] Plea for help on printer

[pjr at ucar.edu]

I am trying to help out a colleague on the installation of a printer
on a linux box (VA Research, running Redhat 6.1, kernel 2.x.x) and I
have run out of ideas. 

It is difficult to decide how much info to throw at you. I have
decided on an intermediate level, and can respond with more info off
or online if you have questions or suggestions. Those of you who cant
help should go on to the next message now, and accept my apologies for
wasting your time.

The bottom line is that I cannot see any bytes coming out of
the parallel port. If I could, I am sure that I could finish the
printer install and configuration.

The guy is in the san franscisco area. He is a novice Linux user, and
not particularly savvy about MS Windoze and I cannot risk any drastic
solutions like reinstalling the OS remotely. It is a dual boot
system with both OSs installed by VA Research.

Here is the setup. We want to hang the printer off the parallel
port. There were a couple of bottlenecks early on. Let me tell you
about them:

1) The machine was partially hardened for security against outside
   hackers while it was at NASA Ames. It wasnt big, just turning off
   a few services. I have not found any indication of problems with
   any other aspect of his machine, but I cant say there isnt
   something lurking there.

2) Redhat 6.1 is known to have a few problems with the parport
   configuration. The posting I have seen on the web have suggested
   the need to explicitly add some combination of the following lines
   to the conf.modules file:

alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc
alias /dev/lp* lp
alias /dev/printer lp

   I have also inserted the line

options parport_pc io=0x378 irq=7

Right now all the above lines are in the conf.modules file. Messages
in the /var/log/messages file and from lsmod suggest the modules are
loaded and connected correctly although I am not sure I will recognize
if there is some subtle problem. I sure could tell there were problems
before I put these lines into the above file.

The permissions on the /dev/lp* devices are the same as operating Linux machines
I use here.  The io address and irq were chosen according to the
working win98 configuration

I have tried both the standard linux "lpd" distributed binaries and
also installed "LPRng" so I could actually do some debugging. I put
LPRng stuff into the /usr/local directory so I can use either
distribution by shutting down the lpd daemon and changing the path. I
have let the "checkpc" program from LPRng check the permissions and
setup the spool directories. I have tried:

1) raw printer configurations where I let the print daemon thrown a
   bunch of bytes at the device (/dev/lp0)
2) filters chosen by the redhat printool to translate the bytes thrown
   at the device in PCL (or something else) using ghostscript
3) just `cat'ing files to the device.

No matter what I do, no lights flash on the printers, and nothing
comes out. All logs, debug messages and output from lpq indicate the
file transmission, queuing etc is proceeded normally.

We have tried 3 different printers that he had laying around his house
(HP deskjet series of various vintages). They all worked when booted
with win98 on this machine.

Of course I have read the printing HOWTOs and perused the net, but
have run out of ideas.  

My last solution (which I dont like) is to hang a win98 box of the
internal network and use SAMBA to access the printer hanging off win98.

I am in over my head, and would appreciate any
advice the rest of you have to offer.

Thanks
Phil
-- 
----------------------------------------
Phil Rasch, Climate Modeling Section, National Center for Atmospheric Research
P.O. Box 3000, Boulder CO 80307
internet: pjr at ucar.edu, http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cms/pjr
Phone: 303-497-1368, FAX: 303-497-1324