printer problem

[shadowrider]

i have this thing so weird.
i was able to print stuff a couple days ago, this afternoon tried to print something and it seems there's no error or anything but it just won't print.
i'm using suse 8.1 , and the thing is when i go to control centre to setup my printer and test it, it works.
so for ex, you type "user@linux> lpr test.txt"
it'll just go "user@linux> " as in nothing happens.
then when you tried to print from pdf files, it seems like it's getting the info of what to print, how many pages, etc, but nothing happens too.

any solutions to this problem?
thx:(

[banzaikai]

Howdy.

Sounds like a spool problem to me. I'm thinking that the test page is sent directly to the printer, while any lpr jobs go to /var/spool/lpd/xxx (where xxx is your printer model). You can start by deleting any jobs in there, in case one is "stuck", or unprintable. Once cleared, try your lpr text.txt job again.

man lpr
will give you some options NOT to use spooling as well.

Hope this helps...

banzai

[shadowrider]

hi thanks for the reply, but there's nothing under /var/spool/lpd/xxx (where xxx in this case SHOULD be canon), but there's nothing there.

then when i lpstat, it gives me
lp-3 shadowrider [size] [date]
.
.
.
.
lp-23 shadowrider [size[ [date]

i believe these are the ones you meant to be deleted?
how to delete them?
thx

[banzaikai]

Sorry for the delay...

> then when i lpstat, it gives me
> lp-3 shadowrider [size] [date]
> i believe these are the ones you meant to be deleted?
> how to delete them?

That's what took me so long to find out. Plenty of info on how to send print jobs, but little on how to stop 'em. Anyway, i found:

lpq (line printer query) checks the status (like lpstat)
lprm (line printer remove) kills the job(s) listed under lpq

So, "lprm lp-3" should do the trick for the example above (repeat as neccessary).

> there's nothing under /var/spool/lpd/xxx
> (where xxx in this case SHOULD be canon)

That's odd. Double-check your printconf to see if the right entries are in there.

Hope this helps...

banzai

[mrBen]

Try printing to lp instead of lpr. I know on my machine, CUPS uses lp but not lpr.