[lug] Printer problem with vmware

[John Karns]

On Sun, 2 Dec 2001, Dhruva B. Reddy said:

> I just installed vmware on my 2.4.14 machine, and now I can't seem to
> print from Linux.  The vmware install script created four devices,
>
> 	/dev/parport0
> 	/dev/parport16
> 	/dev/parport32
> 	/dev/parport48
>
> Which, according to the documentation, are some sort of bidirectional
> ports (as opposed to the unidirectional port, lp0).
>
> Now when I try to print from Linux, I get no indication that anything is
> wrong, either from lpr or lpd.  When I run lpq, I can see the jobs there.  It
> just doesn't print.
>
> Any ideas?

This kind of thing can be tricky to troubleshoot, and difficult to
describe verbally, as there are so many variables, including the type of
printer that you're using (bi-directional or uni-directional), not to
mention your kernel config.  1st I would ask if your kernel has lp support
integrated or as a module.  If it's integrated then it could be
conflicting with the modules that are being loaded.

Beyond that, My short answer would be to restore the old device to
point at your printer.

- "/etc/rc.d/vmware stop"

- use rmmod to unload any vmware modules such as vm

- load the old lp module (it would make sense to modularize all you
parallel port driver stuff, so that you can load & unload specific modules
as desired.

----------------------------------------------------------------
John Karns                                        jkarns at csd.net