Woody - lpd terminates after printing one file
I've set up two Debian Woody systems - one was straightforward. The
other, more recent, was modified by going to the 2.4 kernel, and
upgrading to Gnome 2.2 and Mozilla 1.4 backport (James Strandborge's).
In both cases I've manually set up printing on my Canon BJC250 following
the methods outlined in my dog-eared "Running Linux" book. I manually
created the directories, the filter, and it works - sort of.
For example, if I print from Abiword, the print file is created properly
in the spool directory, but it is not printed. If I run the ps -A command,
it appears that there is no lpd daemon running. If (as superuser) I then
enter /usr/sbin/lpd, the spooled file prints. A check with ps -A after
printing shows no lpd running. The only entries in /var/log/lpr.log
look like:
Dec 28 15:12:03 lucy lpd[253]: restarted
It appears that the system as set up by the Debian installer does not
run lpd at boot. Even when I run it myself, it prints just one file
then terminates. Based on what I have read, when lpd finds a file in a
spool directory, it is supposed to spawn another copy of itself to print
the file, and
continue running. This does not seem to be happening.
If I run lpd first, and then print from Abiword, the file prints, but
the next file sent to the printer does not. The behaviour was the same
with both Woody setups that I have tried, and it does not appear to be
directly related to Abiword (lptest in a command line window behaves the
same.) The behaviour is the same whether I am logged in as root or as
an ordinary user. On files and directories, I have set up permissions
as per the list in "Running Linux". Other files and directories are
left as the Debian installer set them up.
I have since figured out that I should really use CUPS with an automatic
installation package, but I'd like to understand this lpd problem before
I give up on the older system!
Any suggestions???
Reply to: