printing on MacOSX 10.4 no longer works

[robertb]

I have lots of problems printing to my HP LaserJet 5L connected directly via a USB cable->parallel port converter/adapter. The printer queue either just shuts itself off or constantly says "printer not responding".

I rebooted, re-added the printer (CUPS+gutenprint/gimp-print), turned on debugging via cupsd.conf, and cannot make heads or tails.

I reinstalled the OS a couple of weeks ago (due to a hard disk problem). It was working fine after that.

Here's what I do know:

1. I can get it work after rebooting and after turning the printer off and on several times.
2. If I let the computer sleep, I can no longer print no matter how many times I turn the printer off and on.

Here's my /etc/cups/printers.conf:

# Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.1.23
# Written by cupsd on Tue Apr 14 08:21:28 2009
<DefaultPrinter HP_LaserJet_5L>
Info HP LaserJet 5L
Location mini
DeviceURI usb://Unknown/Unknown?serial=0
State Idle
Accepting Yes
Shared Yes
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</Printer>

"cups-config --version" returns "1.1.23". My version of Gutenprint is 5.2.3 .

Does anyone have any ideas how to diagnose the problem? Anything I should look at in /var/log/cups/error_log ?

 

[robertb]

I got this working. I had to do Disk Utility's Repair Permissions.

What I had done is to chmod a number of directories and files to be readable-by-all so I could back them up from a non-root account via rsync-ssh. Apparently, things are very sensitive to their appropriate file modes.

Also, I ended up installing Ghostscript/Foomatic/HPIJS (in desperation) and now the printer seems to work better than it ever had in the past.