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Problem printing to an HP Laserjet 4

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Hello, I am using sarge and want to get my aged Laserjet 4 connected to it. I have connected the printer using the parallel port but CUPS says no printers are connected. I have a vague recollection that the parallel port on the printer doesn't work and that I had to use the serial port when I used it on a Ubuntu system. But I can't try that as CUPS doesn't have the serial ports on the port list. Can anyone help? TIA Mike

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Problem printing to an HP

Submitted by Matt on Mon, 2007-04-09 20:06.

This post suggest creating a link from /usr/lib/cups/backend-available/serial to /usr/lib/cups/backend/serial. Does it help?

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Problem printing to an HP, progress

Submitted by mikeboyd on Tue, 2007-04-10 14:21.

Ok, I followed the link and I now get serial ports listed in the CUPS set-up page, so I am making progress, but the printer isn't detected. I will try another cable when I can get one.

Until then, in the command:-

ln -s ../backend-available/serial .

Do I include the '.'? It appears on the linked page but I wasn't sure if I have to include it.

Thanks for your help. Hopefully we will get there! :-)

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Problem printing to an HP, progress

Submitted by Matt on Tue, 2007-04-10 18:58.

I actually tried it without the '.', and it worked. (See the "second form" in the manpage for ln.) But normally when I use ln -s, I think of it as

ln -s source destination

It also pays to think carefully about the relationship between the source and destination. If the source is in a fixed location, then use a full path to specify the source. If the relative path between the source and destination is fixed, then use a relative path to the source. But be careful when using a relative path to the source. The source path is always relative to the link destination, which may or may not correspond to the current directory.

Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with your actual problem, so I'm not sure if I can help you beyond this point.

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Problem printing to an HP, progress

Submitted by pinniped on Tue, 2007-04-10 19:06.

The 'ln -s' command takes 2 arguments - the file to link to, and the name of the link. A '.' means 'same name but in whatever directory I happen to be in'. I always discourage the use of these 'relative paths' when providing instructions because people get confused; be very careful when you use '.', '../', and './'. The '../' means 'in the directory above', so your 'ln' instruction above translates as:

Create a 'soft link' named 'serial' which points to the file 'serial' which is in a subdirectory named 'backend-available' which in turn is in the directory above me. You'd better be in the right directory at the time or the command will not work.

So if your directory structure looked like this:
/-- blah
|-- backend-available
| |-- serial
|
|-- another-directory

and you did a 'cd /blah/another-directory', then ran your 'ln -s' command above, you would create a 'soft link' name 'serial' in the directory 'another-directory'.

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