CUPS won't start (Puppy 4.2)

[owend]

Hi, I'm new to Puppy (4.2, Cups 1.3.11) with a hard-install to an Acer netbook a110; longterm Linux user on main machine (currently Mint 7) so not totally newb!

I can't get Puppy to print: CUPS won't start, with the error message "Failed to connect to localhost:631"; after that the internet connection usually dies, although email and browser run fine without CUPS's help.

What am I doing wrong (probably something simple !)

[Patriot]

Hmmm .....

........ CUPS won't start, with the error message "Failed to connect to localhost:631"; after that the internet connection usually dies, although email and browser run fine without CUPS's help.

What am I doing wrong (probably something simple !)

Actually, you didn't do anything wrong there ... The cups startup scripts are kinda borked in p420 ... it's noted here and here ... don't use the System -> Manage Printing ...

If you get the error message above, that means cups were gunned down by the startup scripts ... open a terminal and restart cups:

# /etc/init.d/cups start

Whenever you need to access your printer, open your browser and point to http://localhost:631/ ... I'll try to workout a suitable fix for those scripts in a while ...


Rgds

[owend]

Thanks, Patriot! It all worked perfectly in about a minute - I said it was something simple! The big distros (eg my Mint 7) do have advantages with easy oob setup; I don't mind the fiddling, but I just couldn't work out why it wasn't working!

I've put Puppy on a partition on my Acer a110 dual-booting with the original Linpus for testing; I'll probably reinstall to the whole 8Gb SSD in a week or so. Puppy takes up less than 350Mb of a 2Gb partition and does most of what I want - amazing little distro! Especially now I can print!!

[Patriot]

Hmmm .....

Great ! ..... you have a working printer ...

I have a quick fix for the borked menu. Unpack the archive and click on the cupsmenufix script. It will replace the "system -> manage printing" with "system -> cups printer manager" that goes straight to http://localhost:631/ ....

Now let's have some more fun with puppy ...


Rgds

[owend]

Again thanks - it's still printing well!

[PupGeek]

I can get a cups interface up no problem but when I click "add printer" it tries to load the next page and it never seems to get there.

[rcrsn51]

Boot off the Live CD with "puppy pfix=ram" and run CUPS. Do you get the same behaviour?

[PupGeek]

I should try that shouldn't I?..... though I don't believe I have ever gotten it to work that way either.

[PupGeek]

well dayam'd if that didn't work! Now to figure out why I had to do that in the first place.... thanks rc

[rcrsn51]

I wonder if there is a corrupt page in the cache of the little browser used to display the CUPS web interface. Try running your regular web browser and going to localhost:631

[PupGeek]

oh it worked.... and it always used seamonkey to come up.... trouble is it wouldnt go any further than the cups homepage but it worked just fine with a pfix=ram