Monday, February 7, 2011

Ubuntu keeps breaking printers...fix

It is amazing, but every update of Ubuntu changes something in the printer section, and you have to trouble shoot.

I had to a clean Ubuntu install because a SSD drive went bad. I reinstalled the printers, (using my notes on this blog ;), but the Dell 1320C would not print.

It would print a test page, but not a document...oh BTW it is the wife's computer, and she does not do tech (I need to get OSX reinstalled pronto)

So I searched for "ubuntu will print test page but not document" and found a ton of links...I went to a few and found interesting things like http://localhost:631 will take you to the CUPS page...all sorts of printer admin stuff there (on your computer obviously)

That was all well and good but no fix to my problem.

I kept following links and found this page.

The fix is...

When I installed the Dell 1320C, Ubuntu put the printer's "Device URI" as socket://192.168.1.185:9100 .

That link says that "socket" times out, so to fix simply change the address to lpd://192.168.1.185 , remove the :9100 also

So from

socket://192.168.1.185:9100

to

lpd://192.168.1.185

I did that and it worked right away.

I still don't have a reason that every Ubuntu update breaks my printers.

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