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Bug 64905 - upgrading cups made my printer disappear
Summary: upgrading cups made my printer disappear
Status: RESOLVED FIXED
Alias: None
Product: Gentoo Linux
Classification: Unclassified
Component: [OLD] Printing (show other bugs)
Hardware: x86 Linux
: High critical
Assignee: Printing Team
URL:
Whiteboard:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2004-09-21 15:31 UTC by Adam
Modified: 2005-02-08 03:43 UTC (History)
0 users

See Also:
Package list:
Runtime testing required: ---


Attachments
PPD file for my printer (HPDeskJet990C.ppd,19.11 KB, text/plain)
2004-12-07 09:31 UTC, Adam
Details

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Description Adam 2004-09-21 15:31:37 UTC
I upgraded to cups-1.1.20-r2 from cups-1.1.20-r1 2 days ago.  Today I noticed that I couldn't print; I'm pretty sure I haven't tried to since I upgraded but I did print something fairly recently before that.  I went to CUPS configuration and my printer was gone.  After adding it again it printed again, but all the configuration settings were lost.

It may be that the emerge changed a configuration file that shouldn't have changed.

My printer is an HP Deskjet 990C, using the hpijs driver.


Reproducible: Didn't try
Steps to Reproduce:
1.
2.
3.




adam>emerge info

*** You are not in the portage group. You may experience cache problems
*** due to permissions preventing the creation of the on-disk cache.
*** Please add this user to the portage group if you wish to use portage.

Portage 2.0.50-r11 (default-x86-2004.0, gcc-3.3.4, glibc-2.3.3.20040420-r1,
2.6.8-gentoo)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.8-gentoo i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2500+
Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16
Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r4
Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.5-r1
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp -fomit-frame-pointer"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
COMPILER="gcc3"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config
/usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config
/usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref
/usr/share/config /var/qmail/control"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=athlon-xp -fomit-frame-pointer"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox sfperms strict userpriv usersandbox"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp:///ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/
http://gentoo.mirrors.pair.com/ http://mirror.datapipe.net/gentoo"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY=""
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="X alsa apm arts avi berkdb cdr crypt cups dvd encode foomaticdb gdbm gif
gpm gtk2 imlib java jpeg kde libg++ libwww mad mikmod motif mozilla mpeg mysql
ncurses nls oggvorbis opengl pam pdflib perl png ppds python qt quicktime
readline scannersdl slang spell ssl svga tcpd truetype usb x86 xml2 xmms xprint
xv zlib"
Comment 1 Adam 2004-09-21 15:51:32 UTC
I also discovered that since I upgraded, there has been massive slowdown when trying to print, where before it printed within a couple seconds.  Now it waits about a minute before printing, and seems to be using tons of memory since my computer became unresponsive.  Any ideas about this?
Comment 2 Heinrich Wendel (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-09-22 06:05:00 UTC
strange, what about cups-1.1.21, is this one fast?
Comment 3 Adam 2004-09-22 07:39:34 UTC
With cups-1.1.21, it seems to not be printing anything.  But there's no slowdown either.

I think what actually happened with the printer disappearing is I accidentally selected to replace my old configuration file with the new one when running etc-update.  Since I hadn't modified the file by hand, it didn't occur to me that it would delete configuration to do so.  Sorry about that.

But I'm still not sure why printing isn't working.  Maybe it was the "trivial changes" that etc-update made in a few configuration files?  Here's my command line:

root>etc-update
Scanning Configuration files...
Automerging trivial changes in: classes.conf
Automerging trivial changes in: client.conf
Automerging trivial changes in: cupsd.conf
Automerging trivial changes in: mime.convs
Automerging trivial changes in: mime.types
The following is the list of files which need updating, each
configuration file is followed by a list of possible replacement files.
1) /etc/cups/printers.conf
/etc/cups/._cfg0000_printers.conf
Comment 4 Adam 2004-09-22 08:20:20 UTC
I discovered that my printer isn't printing because it's stopped (going through the HTML CUPS configuration), and when I started it it said it's started but then going back to the printer properties it says it's stopped.  There's a message there too:
"Unable to open USB device "usb://HP/DeskJet%20990C": No such device"

But I'm sure I configured it normally.
Comment 5 Adam 2004-09-25 15:27:21 UTC
I reverted to cups-1.1.20-r1 and it started working again.  Due to the error message I mentioned previously, could it be a problem with the way CUPS is writing the URL "usb://HP/DeskJet%20990C" - maybe the new version doesn't allow a %20 in the name?

For now, I'll try to keep using version 1.1.20-r1 if portage will let me.
Comment 6 Heinrich Wendel (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-10-07 08:35:39 UTC
can you please try cups-1.1.21 again and add the printer from scratch and see if it works?
Comment 7 Oliver Schoett 2004-11-07 04:09:37 UTC
I had this problem in April already, and I just found that my printer has disappeared again, presumably due to the recent upgrade from cups-1.1.20-r4 to cups-1.1.20-r5.
Comment 8 Adam 2004-12-07 09:31:35 UTC
Created attachment 45443 [details]
PPD file for my printer
Comment 9 Adam 2004-12-07 09:32:05 UTC
Sorry for the delay.

I tried upgrading to cups-1.1.22 and once again, my printer stopped when I tried to print, with the same message.  When upgrading, I used dispatch-conf and selected to use all new configuration files (it didn't overwrite my printer configuration when doing this, probably because dispatch-conf is better than etc-update).

I deleted the printer and added it from scratch, then configured it.  The same thing happened.

I noticed something that may well be related to this problem.  Testing the PPD file in /etc/cups/ppd gave the following results:

root>cupstestppd HPDeskJet990C.ppd
HPDeskJet990C.ppd: FAIL
      **FAIL**  Unable to open PPD file - Missing asterisk in column 1 on line 58.
                REF: Page 15, section 3.2.

I'm not sure where that PPD file originated; I think it's supposed to be when I add the printer through the browser-based interface.  I remember a long time ago I downloaded a PPD for this printer, but I think that isn't necessary anymore and I don't think that file is still around.  That PPD is the only one in the directory.
Comment 10 Adam 2004-12-07 09:57:20 UTC
I reverted to cups-1.1.20-r5, and didn't touch the configuration (didn't add and delete the printer), and it started printing again relatively normally (there's a few seconds of the hard drive going each time, but not nearly as bad as at first).  The PPD file still fails the check but it prints under 1.1.20-r5.
Comment 11 Heinrich Wendel (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2004-12-24 05:39:49 UTC
please try cups-1.1.23_rc1 (just commiting it) or download a new PPD from linuxprinting.org
Comment 12 Adam 2004-12-31 18:55:40 UTC
Still doesn't work; just sits there with the job pending and the printer gets stopped.  I then downloaded and replaced the new ppd from:
http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=HP-DeskJet_990C
and it didn't make a difference (unless I have to restart the cups daemon?)  The PPDs weren't identical but it seems the differences weren't related to the problem.
Comment 13 Adam 2005-02-07 18:41:19 UTC
Finally!  I re-installed Gentoo and configured my printer from scratch and 1.1.23-r1 is working.  So somehow a configuration file must have been incorrect.

The question now is, did I screw it up or did cups screw it up?  And what kind of configuration file would cause the computer to grind away prior to printing?

By the way, the ppd file still fails the cupstestppd test.

A thought: could pam have been the culprit?  I just removed it, and apparently it was causing not a few problems...
Comment 14 Heinrich Wendel (RETIRED) gentoo-dev 2005-02-08 03:43:48 UTC
not sure, but I'm glade that it works now