Topic: Printer troubleshooting

[Andrew Hodgson]

Hi,

Had this problem, now have reinstalled 5.6 on clean disk and applied updates.  The same problem still occurs when printing.  The problem is that when printing to the device on the E-smith server, I get an error from Windows that says the printing cannot be completed, make sure your printer is connected etc.  Very inspecific.  The printer is connected to lpt1 and when the system reboots or you add the printer after removal, you can see the printer lights flicker.  THe printer is installed in SME as:

Name: brother
Description: HL1030 Mono Laser
Connection: LP0

Has anyone else experienced this before, or can anyone give me more info to troubleshoot the problem?  I have looked in some log files with no success - none of them mention the printer.

Thanks,
Andrew.

[Andrew Hodgson]

Hi,

I am now convinsed that the problem lies in the Windows workstations themselves.  When you print to the printer, nothing is being sent over the network.  Furthermore, in the ports tab of the printer properties, there are no ports sellected, and everything is greyed out for some reason.  Is this the same on other systems?  I have network ports in that list, for example, \pc5\epson - for a colour printer on a WinXP home machine, but nothing for my E-smith server.

Thanks,
Andrew.

[Ray Mitchell]

This thread may be of interest
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=16440.msg63619#msg63619

Also the tips on this site were suggested by Mitel (although not yet proven to be the answer)

http://usl.sis.pitt.edu/trurl/tips.html


Regards
Ray

[Graeme Fleming]

This printer is of the GDI (cheap and basically Windows only) variety.

There is a chance you could get it to work (see www.linuxprinting.org) but you would be better off to just use a PCL or Postscript based laser.

HTH

[Peter Edwards]

Sadly I don't have an answer but found a peculiarity on the 5.6 distro when used with a network of Win2K boxes. Windows informs the user that it is unable to connect to the printer on the SME box but the printer happily works without a glitch.
My suspicion was that this may well of been something to do with that bi-lateral thing that printers do and this somehow not being relayed back to the dumb, sorry I mean windows boxes. It's not really my bag so I followed the addage - "If it aint broke don't fix it" However if some bright spark knows why I'd love to find out what is causing this.

All the best Pete