[Discuss] Printers stopped working in Kubuntu 8.04

[Murray Strome]

Cy Schubert wrote:
> In message <49120DB3.7060303 at shaw.ca>, Murray Strome writes:
>   
>> pw wrote:
>>     
>>> Does the machine have a 'cups' or 'lpr' group?
>>> If you can print as root user, but not as a regular
>>> user, perhaps you need to add the regular user to
>>> a printer group....
>>>
>>> If you look under services in the administration
>>> menu, is the CUPS service actually running?
>>>
>>> *"Unable to open device file "/dev/lp0": Permission denied"*
>>>
>>> looks like the user doesn't have adequate permissions to use the device.
>>> Try :
>>>
>>> sudo chmod 0666 /dev/lp0
>>>
>>> Peter
>>>
>>>       
>> Hi Peter,
>>
>> Thanks. Yes, CUPS is running (earlier, I had tried stopping and 
>> restarting it to no avail).
>>
>> sudo chmod 0666 /dev/lp0
>>
>> got my parallel printer working, and for me, that is the most important 
>> one!  So that has saved me from having to do a re-install. I can live 
>> without the USB printer, at least for now, but would like to know how to 
>> get that one going as well. I have removed and reinstalled it, but that 
>> didn't work.
>>     
>
> The approach I'd use to diagnose this problem is to start by checking out the spooler (e.g. CUPS, lpd, lpsched, etc.). Stop the print queue but leave it enabled, e.g. allow print to spool but don't allow it to print. Verify that it arrives and stays in the queue, then release it. Once you know it spools you should be able to deterimine if a print filter is sending your print to /dev/null or if your print jobs are going into the ether because of a faulty printer or USB hardware/software problem.
>   
For the USB printer, the job stays in the queue. It never prints, but 
says "processing" until I finally remove it from the queue.  It 
certainly is not a hardware problem, as it works perfectly from a Live CD.