cups, udev and usb printer

[alo-alo]

Hi! Did anybody get working usb printer with udev and cups? I can't print with cups. Cups accepts jobs, but it won't print. Over which device are you printing?

[alshain]

Hi! Did anybody get working usb printer with udev and cups? I can't print with cups. Cups accepts jobs, but it won't print. Over which device are you printing?

Hello, did you have any success? Since moving to udev I've had absolutely no luck printing at all. Initially the job would show up briefly in the print queue and disappear. Now with kernel 2.6.3 the printer just spews endless blank pages at me (it's an Epson Stylus 680 by the way). It's frustrating having to boot to Windows just to print things.

Andrew

[alshain]

Hi! Did anybody get working usb printer with udev and cups? I can't print with cups. Cups accepts jobs, but it won't print. Over which device are you printing?

Oh joy! I used foomatic-compiledb to build a ppd database and then

foomatic-configure -n mushroom -N "Epson Stylus Color 680" -L "Here" -c usb:/dev/lp0 --ppd /etc/cups/ppd/Epson-Stylus_Color_680-gimp-print-ijs.ppd -d gimp-print -s cups

and my printer now works again! Strange that neither adding the printer via the web interface or kdecontrol worked.

Andrew

P.S. Yes, it looks exactly like a mushroom

[beandog]

I just realized what was happening to mine.. on the cups admin, it says:

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"Unable to open USB device "usb://HP/DeskJet%20845C?serial=TH173141WMSX": No such device" 

but then I saw right above that,

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 Location: /dev/usb/lp0

and realized the location might have changed with udev ... sure enough /dev/usb/ doesn't even exist. /dev/lp0 does though.

Even then it gave me a few problems, and to play it safe, I just deleted my printer from the cups list completely and readded it. You may not want to do that though, since it loses all your old print jobs.

[Bob Paddock]

Hi! Did anybody get working usb printer with udev and cups? I can't print with cups. Cups accepts jobs, but it won't print. Over which device are you printing?

Yes, I just did, took some digging, but not hard to do in the end.

There are some prerequisites:

Make sure 'usblp' is compiled into your kernel or you are loading it as a module.

Make sure your printer is connected and on, and that 'usbview' shows it.


You may need to Reboot or do the following to get the udev files we need to
find created, they probably already do exist at this point, so you probably
don't have to do this:

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/etc/init.d/hotplug stop
/etc/init.d/hotplug start

Next Open the file:

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# /etc/udev/udev.rules:  device naming rules for udev

Look for these lines:

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# USB Epson printer to be called lp_epson
#BUS="usb", SYSFS_serial="HXOLL0012202323480", NAME="lp_epson"

# USB HP printer to be called lp_hp
#BUS="usb", SYSFS_serial="W09090207101241330", NAME="lp_hp"

To get my Lexmark Z53 working I had to add:

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# USB Lexmark Z53 printer to be called usb_lp_lexmark_z53
BUS="usb", SYSFS_product="Lexmark Z53", NAME="usb_lp_lexmark_z53"

You can use anything you want for the NAME field as long as it does not already exist
in the /dev directory.

The tricky part is figuring out what to put for "SYSFS_" it could be "product",
"serial", "manufacture", "SCSI UUID", "vendor", or several other choices.

To find out the best choice for your printer you need to look in:

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cat /proc/bus/usb/devices

that will give you index for:

/sys/bus/usb/devices

This is the 'devices' entry for my Lexmark Z53:

T:  Bus=01 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=01 Cnt=01 Dev#=  2 Spd=12  MxCh= 0
D:  Ver= 1.00 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=16 #Cfgs=  1
P:  Vendor=043d ProdID=0054 Rev= 1.00
S:  Manufacturer=Lexmark
S:  Product=Lexmark Z53
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=40 MxPwr=  4mA
I:  If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=07(print) Sub=01 Prot=02 Driver=usblp
E:  Ad=02(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS=  64 Ivl=0ms
E:  Ad=83(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS=  16 Ivl=0ms

I took a guess and tried "SYSFS_product" and it worked.
Note the "I: If#=" says "Driver=usblp" on the end.

You may need to find your device the 'hard way' by probing around
in:

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/sys/bus/usb/devices

The "T:" line for your printer should lead you to the right spot,
with Bus=, Lev= and Dev#= entries.

I found the printer that I was looking for in:

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/sys/bus/usb/devices/usb1/1-2

where you find these files:

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ls /sys/bus/usb/devices/usb1/1-2


1-2:1.0              bDeviceClass     bDeviceSubClass  bNumConfigurations  bcdDevice     detach_state  idVendor      power    speed
bConfigurationValue  bDeviceProtocol  bMaxPower        bNumInterfaces      bmAttributes  idProduct     manufacturer  product

You can use any of those file names as the suffix to "SYSFS_". Pick the one
that uniquely identifies your printer, in my case it was the 'product' file.

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cat product

Lexmark Z53

The 'SYSFS_product="Lexmark Z53" in the rule file is what links your
device to UDEV's /sys to get things working.

When you have the rule file set up correctly, do:

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/etc/init.d/hotplug stop
/etc/init.d/hotplug start

Now you should see your device name listed in /dev:

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ls /dev
...
/dev/usb_lp_lexmark_z53
...

To get CUPS to use that printer I had to:

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ln -s /dev/usb_lp_lexmark_z53 /dev/usblp0

Now CUPS uses "USB Printer #1" to print.

You may need to restart hotplug again after adding /dev/usblp0.



--
                    http://www.softwaresafety.net/

[Evil Dark Archon]

you can have the udev rule make the symlink to usblp0, just add a SYMLINK=usblp0 after the NAME statement.

[thundersteele]

Thanx Bob and Evil, I followed your explanations and it is working now.

First I had to change my kernel, cause mm based love-sources had problems with hotplug, but now it is working. great.

[Nate_S]

I noticed that udev (or is it the kernel? it's just the default %k -- using 2.6.6-rc1-love1) now names usb printers lp0 instead of usblp0 or usb/lp0. I set up a udev rule to create lots of symlinks for it like so:

BUS="usb", SYSFS{manufacturer}="Hewlett-Packard", SYSFS{product}="DeskJet 960C", SYSFS{serial}="MY21N1D1M2RO", NAME="usblp%n" SYMLINK="deskjet960 printers/hpdeskjet-960c usb/lp%n %k"
(all one line in /etc/udev/rules.d/10-local.rules)
that's for my hp deskjet 960c

Also, there's a udevinfo command that you can use to find out the info instead of manually searching the /sys directory. Search the forum for 'writing udev rules'

-Nate

[dsd]

the next release of udev will include a rule which by default will create /dev/usb/lp0 as well as /dev/lp0 - this should kill any udev-related cups problems.

the new rule looks like:

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BUS="usb", KERNEL="lp[0-9]*",   NAME="usb/%k"

and thats probably the most simplistic way you can get this going right now.

[AlterEgo]

the next release of udev will include a rule which by default will create /dev/usb/lp0 as well as /dev/lp0 - this should kill any udev-related cups problems.

the new rule looks like:

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BUS="usb", KERNEL="lp[0-9]*",   NAME="usb/%k"

and thats probably the most simplistic way you can get this going right now.

Thanks a lot for that hint!
It solved/circumvented a nasty problem that has been bugging me for weeks
I can now use the usb printer and access my card reader.

[rajl]

So I have that udev rule in place for udev printers, but it's not making the entries appear in the udev tree?