(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Hi, Im trying to install a new USB printer in puppy. Ive always struggled with usb printers, but have always managed to source second hand parallel printers that work fine with puppy. Ive always encountered this problem with USB printers on puppy. This includes the printers with built in usb drivers.

Im trying to install on both puppy linux 4.1.1 and pup 2.15ce (ecopup with puppy with the CUPS 0.3 addon). On both versions, after running the setup steps in the CUPS printer interface window (at localhost:631), I get the message next to the newly installed S20 printer (after selecting usb printer #1) on the setup steps for "add new printer". The only difference being on the puppy 2.15ce setup (with pakts CUPS0.3.pup installed) is next to entry for usb printer #1 it says "Usb Printer #1 (Epson Stylus s20). Puppy 2.15ce seems to be picking up the fact there is this printer installed while puppy 4.1.1 does not.
.

I installed the additional printer drivers from openprinting.org, and copied them to the /usr/share/cups/model directory.

The puppy wiki seems inexplicably absent of any instructions for installing usb printers.

Has anyone had any success with puppy and usb printers? Parallel printers are getting pretty hard to come by.

i have a usb printer [epson stylus c62] running in cups

it took forever and a day to configure

i wish i knew how to tell you how it was set up, but i'm not sure how to retrieve settings without going to cups, which after my epic struggle completely terrifies me

try everything, try it again, make changes that make no sense, have a beer, try again, sleep on it, try yet again the next morning

does the trick for me!

q - how do you configure cups?

a - with a cigarette and a blindfold

[apologies to hank sauer]

ecomoney;

I have 4.1.1 installed and it always identified usb printers.
Used a couple of old hps the last few months ...no problem.
Just hooked up and old parallel port hp and it has 16 usb
options in the list.

Some day I hope to find an old hp with ink cartridges that work.

rjb

Hi this is cindy, the s20 printer is mine and Rob has been trying for three hours to set it up for me.

Cindy is using ecopup, which is a customized 2.15ce. The automatic upgrade to a modern base would break a lot of things and take a LOT if work (I know Ive already tried several times). I am planning to update the base when the new community edition comes out, as these tend to be more complete, have more drivers and are supported for longer.

In the meantime Im a bit stuck, Cindy is actually on the testing team for 4.2, but I wouldnt like her to have to rely on a stock puppy linux for her day-to-day work.

Can anyone guide me through the steps of troubleshooting why ecopup isnt working?

Is gutenprint an option for this printer?

As a test, I installed a Canon i560 USB printer into 4.1.1. When I tried to print a test page, I also got the "usb:/dev/usb/lp0": No such device" message.

So I rebooted with the printer already turned ON and it worked fine. Maybe this has something to do with the new hardware detection methods in the 4.1 series.

Rob (Ecomoney) Posting as Cindy

This is the name of the driver thats installed at the moment, so it is gutenprinte. I got this directly from the heading in the localhost:630 webpage where the printers are administered.

Epson Stylus S20 - CUPS+Gutenprint (OpenPrinting LSB 3.2) v5.2.2

Im goint to try rebooting with the printer turned on now to see if that cures it.

Ok, I rebooted, with the printer turned on. I also set the permissions on the /dev/usb/usb0 file to 777 (i.e. all ticked), I ready Barry had to do this once to get a printer working.

Now I get this error message!
I did a pfind file searc for ghostscript, and found a symlink in /usr/bin/ghostscript to /usr/bin/gsc . I tried running this in a terminal to start it manually and resent the print job, but still nothing.

Any ideas graefully appreciated.

Ive just tried reconfiguring the printer, on the device uri. I did this my clicking "modify printer" On the drop down list of devices where the printer is plugged in, I now get something like
It seems that the printer is talking to puppy (and telling it what model it is), but puppy cannot communicate with the printer...perhaps because of this ghostscript thing.

Im going to reboot into puppy 4.2 alpha and see what happens there. Cindy is going to a caring job in a few days and needs a map printing out.

Ecomoney, posting as cindy again

Have just tried puppy 4.2, and this time the job completes fine, but absolutely nothing from the printer!
I also noticed that the pdf driver wizard is set to the wrong path, it should be going to /root or /root/my-documents, but instead is going to a new directory (which cups creates) called /export/pdf. I will report as a bug to the 4.2 dev team

For the hell of it, I copied /usr/bin/gsc out out of puppy 4.2 into ecopup at the same place. I get the same behaviour in 2.15ce now as puppy 4.2, i.e. no more

"Starting ESP Ghostscript 8.15...."

the jobs are accepting and the printer status going back to idle, but still no printing!!!

I think this indicates that the ghostscript is to blame.

I wonder if the problem has to do with your USB ports. Many computers more than five years old will only have USB1.0 and USB1.1 ports. There was a problem reported with some recent Puppies where the USB drivers were not all loaded.

Go to a console and type: lsmod

You are looking for three entries - uhci_hcd, ohci_hcd and ehci_hcd

If you are missing one, add it with a command like: modprobe ohci_hcd

Then run CUPS again and try a test page.

Or you could get a PCI USB2.0 card and see if it works better.

I didnt check the ports, but as Cindys computer is a Semperon processor I assume theyre usb 2.0's, but thanks for info.

Ive borrowed the said printer while I get it working so should be able to make more frequent tests

this is the post that got my epson working-

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 54&t=37237

hope it helps with yours . . .

Thank you bugman, will try it when I have a moment and report back

A knight in shining armour has come to come to cindys aid, and sent this post via email

http://sourceforge.net/forum/forum.php?forum_id=900635

The problem I have, is that cindy has now sold this printer, to a 91 year old man who has just got his first computer, and he is running Ubuntu (I thought it would work with it, but had no internet access til this week to download the right driver.

Im going to see him the day after tommorow and he will expect his computer and printer working

Does anyone know if gutenprint 5.23 is included in ubuntu?

oh dear....

the s 20 should work fine under ubuntu out of the box mate

Sorry I havent properly updated this problem.

Seems there was a problem (see forum sourceforge post above) with gutenprint (some sort of printing backend/driver pack) where certain types of printers listed as compatable were not. They fixed it in an upcoming release, or its possible to backport. For the moment its possible to "backport" this new gutenprint into existing ubuntu.

One of my clients has a particularly problematic bios which doesnt activate the acpi function on her laptop with ubuntu (tho the latest puppy works fine!). My "plan" is to wait until april and upgrade her to that (9.04 Jaunty Jackalope?) in april, then swap her printer with this one. Backporting in ubuntu is nothing I want to get into!

I wont actually be seeing Austing for a while in any case.