Hi all, I hope that someone can help me with this problem. I searched the forums and saw some similar problems, but not quite the same.

I posted this on the Mageia forum on 12/08 but haven't had any replies, so I'm trying here.

Pretty much a newbie, been using Linux since early 90's (dabbled) but almost exclusively since 2009, but I just use it, don't really know what goes on under the hood.

Project: To get my daughters Win 7 Laptops (1 x 32bit, 1 x 64bit) to be able to print to the Canon i865 attached to my Mageia # 3 Desktop (connected to my desktop via USB).

I did a whole lot of reading about how to get my trusty old Canon i865 installed on my daughters Win 7 Laptops and how to get printers shared between Linux and Windows 7 on a network (most referring to Ubuntu, Mint or other distros). I wanted to set the laptops up to be able to print to the Canon i865 over the network. I found lots of threads advocating using SAMBA, CUPS, IPP - all confusing. I did actually install SAMBA but didn't do anything with it. So in the end I asked on a Microsoft forum and got a sort-of answer.
So, first of all, in MCC, I enabled the printer as "Shared".
Then from my daughter's laptops I was finally able to detect the Canon printer attached to my Desktop under Windows 7 "Add Printer" dialogue searching for a network printer and Windows searched for and installed the driver. I was then able to print a test page successfully. This was the same for both laptops. Actually there were some anomalies on Windows in behaviour, but the end result was the same - a successful test print to the Canon printer on my Mageia Desktop.

So, to the problem: Last night (11/08) I went to print a document on my Mageia Desktop and it would not print at all! In the queue the document was in a status of "processing". This was the first time I had tried to print from my Desktop to the - now shared - printer, since setting it up to - what I mistakenly thought - was a successful network sharing arrangement. After much mucking around, I deleted the Canon i865 networked printer on my daughter's laptops and un-shared the printer in Mageia. Still the document wouldn't print. I re-booted, finally back to normal, no shared printer and the document would print.
I just tested this again by installing the printer again on one of my daughter's Win 7 laptops, did a successful test print. Then from my Desktop I tried to print - no go, same result as before - status of "processing". Sent another test print from Win 7 laptop - in the queue as "pending" behind my Mageia print. Had to delete printer on Win 7 again, un-share printer on Mageia and re-boot to be able to print from my Desktop again.

What is going on? What am I not enabling/installing, doing incorrectly? I was so happy on Friday that I finally had it working and that I hadn't had to resort to asking you good people for help. But now all that has changed and I do have to ask you much more learned people for any assistance you might give be able to me. :?

Update: Okay, now I cannot print at all - directly - again (well almost)! I have deleted the printer, re-booted and turned on the printer so it gets configured and it comes up "shared". So I deleted ALL references for the Canon printer on the Win 7 laptops. Still couldn't print! Okay, so I then went to "Add Printers" dialogue on the Win 7 laptop > search for network printer > not found > enter address > typed \\ and it found my Mageia desktop and something called pdf-gen (\\my-desktop-name\pdf-gen)!!!! I had been trying to print a PDF document. Doesn't seem to matter how many times I have deleted the printer on Mageia, re-booted and re-installed the printer I cannot get it to print directly. Another weird thing is that when press the power button on the printer - with documents in the queue - instead of turning off, it just blinks and will not turn off. I have to pull the power cord out to stop this. If I re-boot, then turn on with documents in the queue it will print a doc that happens to be stored it's memory (?) from prior to the pulling of the power cord! Also the entries in the printer queue remain in the queue even after printing after the pulling-power-cord-out process!

I am totally lost, have no idea what is going on.

Is anyone able to help? This is driving me nuts!

Myles,
Canberra, Australia

was discussing a print server but have decided to seduce OP into buying a wireless printer instead

I'm having my own problems printing from Mageia to a networked printer; there's thread in this forum. (Unfortunately, in my case, Mageia seems to think that everything is hunky-dory.)

Have you looked in /var/log/cups/access_log, /var/log/cups/page_log, and /var/log/cups/error_log? They might tell you something.

Hi

I have changed my mind on buying a print server router. Strictly speaking...below is more like sharing a wireless printer from windows to linux but they independent setups

For a little bit more, you will be better off in the long run buying a wireless printer

aussies can use gumtree....plus ebay

2) I bought one hp3050, but I did not have any windows computers to set it up as a true wireless printer....and I suspect
the prev owner assumed I was a windows user.

leaping ahead, hp offers w7 and linux support for most hp printers.

google the make and model and ensure seller has the w7 driver disc or you can download it.

b) the linux driver is supplied by an independent package called hplip

c) you install the windows drivers to each laptop
then on laptop A----whatever you want to call it
connect the usb lead...use the canon's if it has none
go into the hp settings and configure it to have a static ip address

* make sure you enable port 9100 and bonjour

* give it an unique SSID not "myprinter" but something your family can recognise like

roosterbait .....collywobbles....(use your imagination)

these are used to help wireless network tools detect the hp wireless details.

use the other button when wireless radio is setup...to print out a report and keep it safe

TIP write down that ip and password and tape it to the hp printer

d) disconnect usb lead to A....turn on the wireless radio on hp
and follow the docs on how to connect wirelessly to if from the docs installed into A

e) repeat for laptop B

f) use root powers to edit your cups config to allow admin access to the ip range etc

with hp my cups config uses

socket://192.168.1.200:9100 and


Of course you can also look at other brands....brother is cheap to buy but uses a closed src driver that you have to download etc


http://www.hp.com/global/us/en/wirel...ork-help4.html

frankbell also mentions logs....to get any useful info...you will need root powers to convert to debug mode.

I forgot to ask if your linux computer has a wireless device....if not buy a usb dongle
I can link to ebay if you are interested.

99) the static ip of the hp MUST not be in the range of your router's dhcp range.

eg I log in to wireless router as 192.168.1.1 and I have a reduced dhcp range of
192.168.1.100 to 192.168.1.150

so my actual static is 192.168.1.200
I could have chosen 10.1.1.1 or some thing else

let me know if you are interested in buying a wireless printer and if so describe your linux hardware.

good luck

Thanks for the replies, but not really helpful to me. I am not going to buy a new router with a print server built in, nor am I going to replace a perfectly good printer with a wireless printer. This can't be that hard - it must be able to work somehow! And, yes I understand that I would have to have my desktop powered on all the time for my daughters to be able to print, that's not an issue.

I looked at the CUPS logs and I have no idea what I a looking at/for as far as problems go!

So I am no further advanced from where I was.

If you didn't find anything in the CUPS error log, the logs might not be much help.

Try booting to a live CD of something other than Mageia (I'd recommend Mint) and testing whether you can print from that.

You may have to install HPLIP first.

If you can, it would narrow the problem to something specifically to do with your Mageia load. I'm confident that the issue I'm having is a Mageia issue, not an HP or networking issue, because I've been able to print to the same printer from Slackware, Fedora, Ubuntu, Mint, and Debian.

Frank and others,
I don't know how the discussion got onto HP printers, I am using a Canon i865, nothing to do with HP.

The reason I cannot print now directly has to have something to do with when I initially shared the printer out using CUPS. As I said, now I can print to it, but not directly anymore. So something has become screwed up inside CUPS somehow. I am going to have to read up on CUPS to see what I can find out. I don't want to have to re-install Mageia just to get the printer working again, there must be a way around this problem.

I'm sorry. I think I was the confused person who mentioned HPLIP.

I agree that you should be able to fix this without reinstalling. Unfortunately, it's been a long time since I shared a printer that was attached to a computer, so I'm having visualizing how sharing the printer would produce this issue, but your troubleshooting seems to have established that something in the sharing process has caused this.

Is there anything in the log files that changed with print jobs from before the printer was shared to after it was shared, even the smallest thing? I know it's a long shot . . . .

Milo4t,
This won't really help, maybe inspirational, but I print FROM a Win7 box TO a Lin(Mandriva-very much like Mageia) box, and I found that I needed both cups and the "Set up printers and que's etc" feature in the control center, hardware section -set up and running for it to work. It prints from the Linux install also.

When it hickups I go into both places (cups and the control center) and make sure "enabled" and "default" have not ben tripped to off.

I suspect however (not sure though) that I am tackeling the problem differently than you and could not give good info about your particular setup.

monsteriname, thanks for that info - that is really helpful as Mageia is a fork of what was Mandriva. I used Mandrake/Mandriva right up to Mandriva 2011, then they mucked it up so I went to Mageia, now Mandriva as a Linux Desktop is no more!

So what do you do in CUPS?? Is that the http://localhost:631/admin page??? In there I found that the printer was still shared, so I un-ticked those boxes but I am still having problems printing to my printer.

Its been about 2 years ago that I got it working and have not had any real problems to mess with it since (on that server end of it), I don't remember the steps to make it work. My normal method is to do something I call "beat the crap out of it" until I get it to do what I want. My process is hours and hours of trying different things, hours and hours of googeling and reading, repeat as necassary, usually several cycles. I'm not that bright andI have a terrible memory.

The setup I have currently up and running is headless, we use it as a print server.

When I saw your post, to make sure I remembered correctly that it would print itself, in addition to printing for our 2 other computers;

I logged on to it via ssh and printed a text file from the command line using lp. So it does print from itself.

What makes me think we may be "sharing" this printer differently than the way you are is that I never got any kind of auto discovery type stuff to work from the Windows box (for Windows to find the printer), and have to manually enter the network address to the printer. It is at http://x.x.x.x:631/printers/hp-6000-blah-blah when accessed from windows, and at localhost:/631/printers/hp-6000-blah-bla when accessed from the linux box itself

If you or someone here can think of settings for me to check and report back to you I will be glad to. I will also muck around with it when I get the chance.

For mine, if cups isn't running it won't print from the network.
Cups WAS running when I printed a test page on itself.

Good luck, sorry I'm no real help

"share printers" and "print from the internet" are both ticked on mine, although I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut (but no more) that "print from the internet" neither needs to be, nor should be.

output from lpstat shows how the computer says they are connected (we have 2 printers on that computer - they both work);

lpstat -v
device for HP2350-mfd: hp:/usb/PSC_2350_series?serial=MY5CHF43SDKJ
device for HP_6000_net: usb://HP/Officejet%206000%20E609a?serial=CN08P1F27P057W


here is the cups config file ;

monsteriname,
thanks for your replies, most appreciated. I have already done a lot of Googling and reading threads etc., but will probably need to do some more as you point out. I'll have a look at my CUPS config and see what I can find, and compare to yours.