Epson DX5050 and 12.04.2LTS

[catgate]

I thought my upgrade had all gone swimmingly until I wanted to print something.
I have an Epson DX5050 printer/scanner and I know from way back that there is something a bit odd about the recognition of this thing.
As far as I can remember when I upgraded to 10.04 the upgrade recognised the printer, but now it does not want to know. The fact that I allowed the upgrade to make Libre the default Office crossed my mind, but Gimp, which recognised the DX5050 prior to upgrade, does not want to know, so feel it may not be the Libre change.
I went looking for the file that has all the printer config within, but with no luck (well it must be at least five years since I needed it before and I have slept since then).
The only thing that seems to work is Simplescan. However all that indicates is that there are no dead electron clogging up the wires.
So if any kind soul has any suggestion I should be very grateful.

[caf4926]

Did you try via CUPS web interface?

[catgate]

Did you try via CUPS web interface?

I have just been and had a look at the "CUPS web interface" site and it would appear, to my untutored point of view, to be of little help.
When I try to use the printer Libre Office recognises it, although it refers to it as a DX5000, when it is infact DX5050, and passes the document into the print queue. Once into the print queue all action ceases.

In home/sane/xsane is file Epson:CX5000.drc along with xsane.mdf and xsane.rc.

The printer is also a scanner, and when I use it as a "photocopier" it works just as normal., so I think there is nowt wrong in t' works.

[nelz]

Everything you say shows that the problem IS with CUPS. LO is sending the print job to CUPS and there it stops. Have a look in /var/log/cups/error_log for clues.

[catgate]

Everything you say shows that the problem IS with CUPS. LO is sending the print job to CUPS and there it stops. Have a look in /var/log/cups/error_log for clues.

Thank you for your quick response, nelz.
I can not find /var/log/cups/error_log . Is this path the total path or is there something, pre the /var......, that I should retrieve from the depth of my ignorance?

I am becoming more convinced by the day that your wisdom regarding the friendliless of Unix is correct.

[lok1950]

That's the full path lad.But if there is nothing there you would see anything BTW the web interface is not on the interwebs at all it an address on your own machine and if there is nothing there then CUPS is not install correctly.

Enjoy the Choice

[catgate]

That's the full path lad.But if there is nothing there you would see anything BTW the web interface is not on the interwebs at all it an address on your own machine and if there is nothing there then CUPS is not install correctly.

Enjoy the Choice

This is all getting out of hand.
I have now found /var/log/cups/error_log. Why did I not find it before? Senility? Blindness? Incompetence?? Was it hiding???
The first error entry is
E [18/Feb/2013:09:52:25 +0000] Unknown directive SystemGroup on line 3 of /etc/cups/cupsd.conf.

I have also found /etc/cups/cupsd.conf. to which it refers in the first few lines.

LogLevel debug
MaxLogSize 0
SystemGroup lpadmin
# Only listen for connections from the local machine.
Listen localhost:631
Listen /var/run/cups/cups.sock
# Disable printer sharing and shared printers.
Browsing Off
DefaultAuthType Basic
<

Another file which appeared from somewhere contained what looked like a record of all the documents printed or cancelled for the last three years. This looked very much like a dead print queue, and I wondered if this was having some effect so I emptied it.

I have another printer (Epson Photo R200) and I shall hook that up and see how that fares.

[catgate]

So I plugged it in and it just printed.
I should perhaps have a look at what it says in the files about which Epson DXxxxx printers are included in the 12.04 packages......if someone could be kind enough to point me to them.

[catgate]

Episode No. ?

My spare printer was plugged into my spare computer which I use as a spare/stand-by/experimental instrument. It was onto this machine that I loaded 12.04 several months ago, just to take a look at it, (and what I saw did not enthuse me). So I waited for 12.04.1 before upgrading from 10.04 on my "using" computer.
About a week ago I got an update notification, which I logged into and got the latest magic.

The current situation with regard to printers is :-

Spare computer running original 12.04 will run Epson Photo R200 and Epson DX5050
"Using" computer running 12.04.4 will run Epson Photo R200 but will not run DX5050 since update. It will scan with Simplescan.

During the last couple of weeks we have been "feeling the benefit" of BTs policy of playing fast and loose with speed, and drop out, and I was quite relieved after the update to find that everything seemed to work as it should........until a couple of days later when I wanted to print on the DX5050.

Both computers recognise the DX5050, but seem to want to treat it as DX4850 (I seem to think this was the only driver available to all post 4850 DX machines).

Is there a way of reloading the parts of the upgrade that relate to CUPS? and more to the point would this help?

[catgate]

I had a look in on Ubuntu Forums and it looks to me as though this printer problem is endemic with 12.04 and has been about since the 12.04 was first let loose.
Very odd.

[catgate]

It is with some sense of embarrassment mixed with a good deal of puzzlement that I can report that this problem may be solved.

As I was wandering through the set up again I noticed that system tools/system settings/printer had an on/off button in the top right hand section of the control panel and this was aligned with the printer name.
Being a simple soul I originally imagined that this was a button for switching from one printer to another if more than one printer was attached to the machine.(Don't ask me why. It could be because I could not remember seeing such a thing before.)

The upshot of this was that I removed the Epson R200 which was working well and reconnected the Epson DX5050 which previously would not work. The machine recognised it as a EpsonDX4850 but that was understandable (well it wasn't really, but it does that).
I clicked the on/off button on the right hand side of the panel to ON and tried a test page...with success. I then printed a picture and a letter and then spent quite a long time trying to kick my self in the you know where.