lp

[Tony Facca]

Fletcher Robinson <frobinso at cirm.northrop.com> writes:

> I was running 3.1C on a 4D70GT and I had a dumb printer hanging off a
> serial port. I installed REV.G and the printer configuration went into
> the twilite zone ...

> Now, whenever I issue a lp , lpadmin , or lpstat command, it goes away
> for about 30 to 60 seconds only to return an error message :

>		can't lock printer status

> Any ideas about what happened and how do I repair it ??????????

I had a similar problem, not quite the same when I upgraded to 3.1 the first
time.  I was getting a "printer xxx has disappeared!" message.  It turned out
that if I needed to create a couple of status files in the /usr/spool/lp
directory.  I did this:

	cp /dev/null /usr/spool/lp/pstatus
	cp /dev/null /usr/spool/lp/qstatus

and the printer "re-appeared".  Now, I was just grasping at straws when I
did this, but it solved my problem.  I would also check the permissions on
the /dev/tty port to which the printer is attached, maybe it got hosed 
during the installation.  Mine says:

crw-rw----   2 lp       bin        0,  4 Aug 16 15:11 /dev/ttyd4

If all else fails, why not re-install the printer.  There is a program
called "preset" which does a good job of removing printers (all of them, 
by the way).

Hope this helps..
--
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Tony Facca                     |     phone: 216-433-8318
NASA Lewis Research Center     |    
Cleveland, Ohio  44135         |     email: fsfacca at lerc08.lerc.nasa.gov
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