Arch Linux

ninian

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From: United Kingdom

Registered: 2008-02-24

Posts: 726

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Can't install parallel port printers or use printer/scanner

I have two fully upgraded systems, each of which has a parallel device: an HP Laserjet 2100 printer; and an HP PSC 500 printer/scanner/copier. They "worked fine a while ago" (!), but when I try and reinstall them now (as root or user) via the KDE Control Center, I get this error message at the end of the installation:

Unable to create printer: Error message received from manager:
You don't have access to the requested resource

I also notice that under Add Printer / Local printer / Local System / Parallel it only shows 'LPT #1' and not the identifier of the actual device as expected.

I've checked that the devices can be installed and work as expected under the new Knoppix 5.3.1 and Absolute Linux 12.1 distros - and I can successfully scan using the HP PSC 500 too.

Had a look at many error reports in various forums, but these seemed the closest to home:
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/9867
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=45456
http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/index … opic=66751

Tried adding lp, parport and parport_pc explicitly to my modules list in rc.conf but no luck. Also, 'dmesg|grep lp' reports:

lp: driver loaded but no devices found

Reinstalled my cups and hplip packages, and tried downgrading them too, to no avail.

This is doing my head in - any fixes most welcome!

Last edited by ninian (2008-05-26 10:05:59)

ninian

Member

From: United Kingdom

Registered: 2008-02-24

Posts: 726

Website

Re: Can't install parallel port printers or use printer/scanner

Mixed news - I have solved one problem only to discover another!

Here's how I managed to get KDE adding printers again:

# pacman -Rd cups libcups
# rm -r /etc/cups
# pacman -S cups libcups

But I find that I cannot scan reliably with the HP PSC 500, getting either a "busy" or "i/o error" message when running XSane; or else it usually loads with scan resolution = 0 instead of 75. But sometimes (say 10%) it works!

I also found the sane-troubleshoot program from http://www.meier-geinitz.de/sane/sts/ and it reports:

[hpaio] failed to open scan channel: scan/sane/hpaio.c 665
<-- sane_open (hpaio:/par/PSC_500?device=/dev/parport0): Device busy
- OR -
[hpaio] scl.compat1150=<5300A>: scan/sane/hpaio.c 1808
[hpaio] SclSendCommand: size=6 bytes_wrote=0: scan/sane/scl.c 199
[hpaio] [0000]   1B 2A 73 31 39 45                                   .*s19E
<-- sane_open (hpaio:/par/PSC_500?device=/dev/parport0): Error during device I/O

Also, I wonder whether this comment from http://www.xs4all.nl/~ljm/SANE-faq.html#43 is significant:

7.7. I'm using IDE over SCSI and I keep getting IO-error under xsane.
The IDE via SCSI driver seems to create problems. Please advise the mailing list.

Just checked again, and I can scan fine with the HP PSC 500, running from the Knoppix 5.3.1 live DVD.

ninian

Member

From: United Kingdom

Registered: 2008-02-24

Posts: 726

Website

Re: Can't install parallel port printers or use printer/scanner

Okay, this may be a conversation with myself, but I think it's useful to put the fixes down on record for some other poor soul(s) with the same or similar problems ...

I've found that the scanning problem occurs with hplip versions >= 2.8.2 and not with versions <= 2.7.10.
So, I modified the version number in the 2.8.2 PKGBUILD to create a 2.7.10 package and it seems to works reliably. Whether the actual problem lies with hplip or the included hpaio driver, I don't know.
Happy days again!