Posted by nathanbullock on Sun 6 Nov 2005 at 16:38
I have been using Debian (Sarge) for about a year as a webserver. Recently though our family has moved the main computer into the main room, and so we would like to keep the printer down in the utility room where the server is. I can't figure out to get my parallel port printer working though.
I plugged the printer into the parallel port, turned on the printer, rebooted, and then tried to print a tiny text file by typing "lpr testprint". Text came up that basically said, parport, Samsung ML-1740, and a little bit of other stuff. The following was logged by syslog :
localhost kernel: parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE] localhost kernel: parport0: irq 7 detected localhost kernel: parport0: Printer, Samsung ML-1740 localhost kernel: lp0: using parport0 (polling).
Then when I typed lpq nothing was there and nothing was printing.
So basically where do I start, I have tried searching Google for information, nothing very informative comes up, I am used to using RedHat for printing, and normally I just plug in the printer, a message comes up when I boot the machine saying printer found, and then it just works.
What is the default printing system in Sarge? Is CUPS the proper system to be using? Is there some command line auto-configure tool? What packages do I need to install? I don't have X-windows on the server, so a graphical configure tool isn't going to help me.
I only need to be able to print locally on the machine and from other linux boxes around the house, no windows support is really needed.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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