eAction

Oh the things we learn when we’re on our way to doing something else! Sometimes we get stopped in our tracks, but if we take time to learn the lesson well, it can pave large sections of the road ahead for us. In our panic we sometimes miss that learning curve advantage.

When I first installed this Suse 9.3 last September, I noticed that I could easily give the print command by clicking a button or going down the File drop down menu and clicking print, when in Open Office. When I tried that from some other programs like GIMP, everything froze up. I got error messages that told me I didn’t have access or privileges for that, and I couldn’t delete the print jobs in the print manager. It got very frustrating. Once I had a stalled print job like that in the KDE printing manager, if I went into Open Office and hoped to print the same file from there, no go. Those other print jobs had to be cleared up or dealt with first.

I found that if I unplugged the printer, and re-plugged it in, Suse would treat it like a new printer, identify it, and when I confirmed I wanted it hooked up, all the old stalled print jobs would be gone, and I could print again - in Open Office.

A couple of weeks ago I was looking at a document in PDF within my Konqueror browser. Without thinking about it, I hit the print button, expecting to whip out that page. Nothin’ doing! My saga of troubles began in earnest. The more I tried to re-do settings in Yast for my printer, or to install new instances of it, so I could print from a different setting for the same printer (which I understand is perfectly legal and even recommended) - the more messed up things seemed to get. I wasn’t allowed into this or that, and I got error messages saying my CUPS wasn’t installed.

I checked and it was. I knew CUPS was a highly praised system for managing all your print jobs from a Linux operating system. But I had trouble getting into the management screen, and felt like it was no good to me. But, since every page I researched on the net seemed to think it worked so wonderfully, I took some hours off to get to the bottom of CUPS. Well, some hours again, on several subsequent days. Every time I discovered something new, I tried it out. Maybe that’s what I had been missing.
The CUPS localhost:631 address seemed to insist on my root password, but rejected it every time.

I even downloaded the latest CUPS software and tried installing it. Nope. Not the answer.

CUPS RESEARCH:
The page has extra links with MORE info: http://www.cups.org/cups-help.html

Oh oh. On this page, http://www.linuxprinting.org/till/printing-tutorial/tut.html - I found this paragraph;

QUOTE:
* On SuSE systems another authentication method is used (”Digest”). To use the web interface, you must give a digest
password to root at first, using the command “lppasswd”: lppasswd -a -g sys root

and enter a password (not necessarily the normal root password. This password has to be used for the web interface (or any other CUPS frontend) then.
END QUOTE.

So I assigned myself a new Digest password, and using that command. Presto! I could get into the CUPS Administrative page at last!

I also learned that the KDE Printing Manager is considered a very good graphical CUPS administrative interface, and KDE comes with most Linux distributions. But you need to make sure, when in the Administrator Mode, that near the bottom CUPS is chosen as your printing system. Mine was, but I believe it was the lack of a Digest password that was my problem.

On the web you will find information on http://printing.kde.org

In summary, this page was most helpful : http://susefaq.sourceforge.net/faq/cups.html
but the final clues were on this page; http://www.linuxprinting.org/till/printing-tutorial/tut.html
I had to give, in the Konsole, a digest root password (see above) and then I could get into the online admin area.
http://localhost:631/ . Up to that time it refused my passwords!

I also learned how to restart CUPS after I had made some changes to the cupsdconfig.conf file and saved it.

I haven’t tried printing from in GIMP yet. Simply no time, but Hallelujah! Yes! I can print from in the PDF file in Konqueror, and from Kate, and from KMail, all as well as from in OpenOffice. My printer is working again, and better than before!

Blessings,
Ruth