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Debian Sarge doesn't print unless root.

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Two identical ancient Compaq 200 Mhz boxes. Everything used to work slowly but fine...they both printed via network to a Lexmark Optra connected to a Mepis 6 box. The other day, I did an apt-get upgrade, and now, there are NO printers listed for the user in KDE, only for root. So, of course, nothing prints from the user account. This is bad since the "users" on these systems are students and now they can't print their work. Yikes!

I searched the forums and didn't find anything about this, but if there is already another thread on this topic, I'd be most appreciative if someone would point me in the right direction. If not, any ideas?

Thanks.

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‹ cups/printer seem to have crashed I just reinstalled and need to mount an old raid5 array/ OK! I fixed it, sort of, it doesn't survive reboots ›

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A couple of things to try

Submitted by cammoblammo on Fri, 2006-12-15 06:42.

There are a couple of things that might help shed some light on the subject. First, go to a console and type 'groups' (without the quotes!) This will tell you what permission groups you are in -- you want to be in 'lpr'.

If you're in this group, try printing a file with the command 'lpr file.txt' If that works, it's a problem with KDE. If it doesn't work, you probably have to go through the process of setting your printer up again.

If you're not in the group lpr, become root and type 'adduser username lpr' (substituting your username of course!) Logout, and log back in again. Run 'groups' again -- you should be a member of lpr now. Try printing something -- first from the command line and then KDE. Hopefully it will all work nicely.

I've had a similar problem before from KDE and I had to change a line somewhere to fix the problem. Unfortunately, I can't for the life of me remember what it was!

Whatever happens, let us know how you get on. If it works, that'll help someone else. If it doesn't, we'll keep trying!

--
A tidy house is the sign of a stolen computer.

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A couple of things to try

Submitted by squashpup on Fri, 2006-12-15 08:46.

"groups" returns both lpr and lpadmin.

When I try to "lpr text.txt", I get

bash: lpr: command not found

I become root and try again...same result.

Almost as if the update uninstalled CUPS, eh?

But, I open ksysguard, and there's cupsys running. Strange.

I'm going to try to remove and reinstall cups and see if that does anything. Thanks for your help, and if you have additional ideas, that'd be great too!

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Making progress!

Submitted by squashpup on Fri, 2006-12-15 09:13.

Reinstalled Cups. It now sees the Optra when I run as a user. However, now Open Office seems to not want to look for it; when I try to print with it, it defaults to "Generic Printer" and there are no other options in the drop-down box. Tried running "dpkg-reconfigure openoffice.org"...returns a message that it's updating the dictionary, seems to work fine...but then I try to print and again, "generic printer" is the only option.

I'm going to google a bit and I'll post the answer here if I find it...

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A couple of things to try

Submitted by squashpup on Fri, 2006-12-15 12:15.

Okay...got it now. Both were printing fine, but terribly, terribly slow. It would take over 3 minutes from the time I clicked Print until the Lexmark actually started printing. Found a workaround, though. I launched "kdesu /usr/lib/openoffice/spadmin". From there, I clicked on Default Printer and set it's command as "kprinter --stdin". This, as I understand, passes the document to KPrinter, which then prints it. It adds an extra dialogue to the print process, but the page is delivered instantaneously to the printer. I've used this before with Firefox when it wouldn't print as well.

Point is, the two ancient Compaqs are up and working again.

Now, to another question. I have Knoppix installed on a different box, with the default version of OpenOffice.

Every time I start it, it asks me to register...even if I click that I don't want to or that I already have. Is this a nag built into the newer versions of Ooo, or is it a glitch of some sort? Any idea how to fix it? Thanks...

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