Re: printing woes

["Steve Poling" <sdpoling@xxxxxxxx>]

Weeks ago, I upgraded to RedHat 6.2 and my printers quit working. Wesley
Leonard suggested I chmod 666 /dev/ttyS0 and try /usr/sbin/lpc to restart
the daemon. Moreover, Dirk Bartley suggested I use the script in
/etc/rc.d/init.d/lpd to {stop|start|restart}.

I did all this. I went away and got seriously distracted. here's what I've
learnt in the meantime.

0. if i reboot (like a Windoze luser), i can get the inkjet printer to
print.
1. if i kill -9 any process that has "lpd" in its name, I can get
/etc/rc.d/init.d/lpd to start|restart the print daemon
2. if I run /usr/sbin/lpc, i can check status but I can't restart the lpd
daemon, but get the message "connection refused"
3. if i run printtool (from X) i can restart lpd and get the inkjet printer
to print

However, i've found that after i get the inkjet printer to print, the print
daemon gets hung up again.

I can cat somefile > /dev/lp0 to the inkjet printer and get it to work.

My laser printer is an ancient Apple laser printer. If i stty < /dev/ttyS0,
i get the right baud rate, etc. BUT if i cat somefile.ps > /dev/ttyS0 the
printer never sees anything and the cat never returns.

There's *nothing* in /var/log/messages concerning the demise of my print
daemon.

I'm wondering if the print daemon is trying to talk to the serial channel,
getting preoccupied with *that* and then forgetting my parallel printer. Is
there an easy way to "take out" the serial printer temporarily? (I had a lot
of grief getting it working in the first place. i don't want to lose my
printcap settings.)

any suggestions about things to check?

Man am I ever regretful that I ever updated my system to RedHat 6.2