Re: printing

[Steve Litt <slitt@troubleshooters.com>]

On Sun, 17 Aug 2014 15:26:46 +0200
dick kampman <dkampman@xs4all.nl> wrote:

> My old HP-LaserJet-6MP is printing apropriate under Ubuntu and Fedora.
> Under Debian, helas, I just get white pages. I tried to
> edit /etc/cups/ppd/HP-LaserJet-6MP but without result.
> 
> What should I do?

Do a little dance.
Make a little love.
Get down tonight!

Then, after you've done all of that stuff, investigate. First step,
make absolutely sure something didn't change with the printer, because
if that happened and you thought the problem was in your computer,
you'd be troubleshooting forever. If practical, reconnect one of your
computers that *does* work. If that works, reconnect it back to your
Debian computer. Make a text file called junk.jnk containing "hello
world" on the first line and a formfeed (Ctrl+L) on the second. Then do
this command:

lpr -l -P my_printer_name

The preceding sent nothing but ascii characters to the printer, told
the printer driver those characters were already formatted for this
printer. You *should* get a blank page with the phrase "hello world" in
the printer's default font at the top left. If not, and if the
other printer produced print on this printer, you've pretty much proven
that my_printer_name isn't producing print, and you can feel good about
troubleshooting on your Debian machine. Continue...


Make sure CUPS is installed, and with your browser go to
http://127.0.0.1:631, log in as root with your root password when
asked, and investigate what driver your printer is using and what
options that driver has set. If it's using a driver for a printer other
than your HP-LaserJet-6MP, switch to the HP-LaserJet-6MP driver. If it
can't be found, chances are you need to install a package with arcane
HP printer drivers. If you still have the CD that came with your
printer, you can put that in your drive and click "have disk" and use
the driver on the CD.

If none of that stuff bears fruit, you can install other programs to
configure HP printers. Try those.

HTH,

SteveT

Steve Litt                *  http://www.troubleshooters.com/
Troubleshooting Training  *  Human Performance