USB Printer...

[sabbas]

Upgraded from Feisty to Gutsy and suddenly CUPS refuses to 'see' USB printers.
The O/S 'sees' the printer as the output from lsusb shows;

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 04a9:1094 Canon, Inc. PIXMA ip3000x Printer
Bus 001 Decive 001: ID 0000:0000

Using System Settings->Printers to add a new printer class the 'Add Printer Wizard' has the 'Local printer (parallel, serial, USB)' ghosted out, they are not selectable. Also ghosted out is 'Serial Fax/Modem printer'.

So this looks like a CUPS problem, or perhaps whatever Cups is relying on to detect printers is not quite making the grade, because if CUPS simply did an LSUSB and parsed the output for the word 'Printer' it would certainly find the device.
Are there any CUPS experts out there that can shed some light on whats happening here?

[Snowhog]

Re: USB Printer...

See my How To: Access Local printer (parallel, serial, USB) in Printer Wizard. The process worked for me.

[sabbas]

Re: USB Printer...

Thanks for the tip, but like Israfel_21 (who replied to your original post) I have the cupsys-driver-gutenprint installed. I also stopped CUPS, removed cupsys-driver-gutenprint, reinstalled it, and restarted CUPS, all with no success, I might have well just waved a dead-chicken at it.
The frustrating thing is that the OS sees the printer (lsusb) but lpinfo does not. *sigh*.
I'll suppose I could install Windoze under VirtualBox. Windoze will see the printer hanging off the USB port, I could then share it back to the Linux host using Samba and have CUPS see the printer that way... how silly is that!?

[sabbas]

Re: USB Printer...

OK.. SOLVED!
I was remotely connecting into the KUBUNTU box in question. The end user had the printer configured so that it would 'wake up' on USB activity. The power LED on the printer was always off. Asking her to turn on the printer resulted in the printer not turning on. Moved the printer power connection to another power outlet and powered it up, NOW lpinfo can see the printer AND lsusb also sees the printer.
I suspect that the power from the USB was allowing lsusb to see the device, and indeed, when I did a tail -f /var/log/messages and had the user disconnect and reconnect the USB cable I saw messages reporting that the device was removed and added. This sent me on a wild goose-chase, thinking that there was indeed power to the printer when there was not (remember, I could not actually eye-ball the printer to see if it was powered on).
Anyway, it all works. lpinfo sees the printer, lsusb sees the device. CUPS sees the device and TurboPrint works perfectly with the ip3000, producing beautiful output.

[Snowhog]

Re: USB Printer...

That'll do it for sure!! TIP: Always check that the device itself is turned on.

Please return to your initial post and click the modify button and add SOLVED to the subject line.

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