Printer on parallel port not working

[yogi_al]

Hi,

I have TC 4.7 installed on a POS and attached to it is a label/receipt printer connected locally on the parallel port.
I dont have the drivers to the printer. It is expected to print only text.
I have installed CUPS and also foomatic-rip. I used the cups webpage for adding and configuring the printer. I configured the printer as Generic and Raw types, but it wouldnt print the test page.
It did create a print job when I used the command line >lp -d test1 filename . But it wouldnt just print the file.

I have attached the "error_log" file.
It gives insecure permissions but I have given root permissions to the /usr/local/lib/cups directory but it doesnt help.
Also, have the "bad driver information file" for the cups filter, because it cant find include file pcl.h, is there some thing that Iam missing?

I also tried printing using >text2lp0 filename but this didn't work either.

Any help will be great guys, thanks in advance.

[curaga]

The label printers I've seen always require a driver, even just for text. Are you sure yours doesn't?

[yogi_al]

It is a Ithaca 8040 Thermal Linerless Label / Receipt Printer. They only have windows drivers. And in their manuals for this particular series they mention using windows generic text drivers. So I am assuming that the generic linux text drivers ought to work too.
At the least is it possible to use Raw to print?

Thanks.

[gerald_clark]

To test try:
ls -l /bin > /dev/lp0

substituting the proper device for lp0.

[yogi_al]

Thanks Gerald.

The printer is connected to lp0. When I give the command ls -l > /dev/lp0 the command prompt just waits, nothing happens.

[gerald_clark]

If you get back a command prompt, it means the data went to the printer, but the printer did not print it.
It sounds like you are out of luck unless you can get the manufacturer to supply you with CUPS drivers.

[yogi_al]

Well, in this case it did'nt get back to command prompt.

I also tried this command >lp -d test1 hello.txt, where test1 is the printer/device name.
It gave me "request id is test1-1 (1 file(s))"

I can see the request in the cups job queue but it doesn't print. And I get the Bad driver information file in the error_log.
Since the request is being queued up, is there a possibility for print?

[curaga]

Since you didn't get back to the prompt, it means the data never went there. Either the printer didn't accept it or there is some issue with the cable.

[yogi_al]

The printer was bad, got it swapped for a new one. And now everything works.
Thanks guys.

[yogi_al]

Hi

Iam able to print directly to the parallel port and now I tried getting it to print with CUPS, but am not able to. This is a thermal label printer.
I have installed foomatic and ghostscript as well but am getting errors as mentioned in the attached file.

For the insecure permissions, I have changed the ownership to root.root, but I still get the error.
For bad driver information file, it is not able to find "pcl.h" file. I have selected the driver as a Generic text driver. And it is not a HP printer, I have installed libgs-dev to resolve this but it does'nt help. I dont think Iam moving in the right direction.

If I select Generic PostScript Printer it prints a whole lot of junk for a file that has only 2 words "Hello World".

I think the "GEneric text-only printer" should work. Any help would be great.

[curaga]

D [01/Dec/2015:16:25:21 +0000] [Job 9] PID 10278 (/usr/local/lib/cups/filter/textonly) stopped with status 102 (No such file or directory)

That filter is in cups-filters.tcz. Try installing that.

[yogi_al]

Hi Curaga,

I tried it already but no luck. I guess when I install cups, it automatically pulls the cups-filters as well.

[curaga]

I see it's a bash script, try installing bash.

[yogi_al]

Installed bash, but no luck. I still keep getting the "Bad driver information file "/usr/local/share/cups/drv/cupsfilters.drv"
It keeps looking for pcl.h file which I dont have on my device.

[Juanito]

/usr/local/share/cups/ppdc/pcl.h is in the cups-filters extension...