Having set up mdk 7.0-2 on my two PCs and having had
few problems (except for incomplete network setup on one),
I agreed to help a colleague set it up on his PC.
Unfortunately, we have had nothing but problems.
We have resolved the same network issue that I had
(this is obviously a bug in the installation).
X is running after a fashion--though not properly,
since the install did not work with his ATI rage
pro turbo card for some unknown reason. We can
probably get that fixed up too, though.
However, we are now having a rather strange problem
trying to get printing working. He has an Epson stylus
900 with usb and parallel port connections, which he has
been using through the usb connection to Win98. We decided
to switch to the parallel connection for Linux. We used
the drakconf/printtool to set up the queue and printed a
test page successfully. Then he rebooted to Win98 and it
installed the printer again via the parallel port and printed
to it successfully. Back to Linux, but now no response to
an lpr command or to a redirection to /dev/lp0 (the parallel
port being used). Huh? It is like the Win98 printer install
did something (although it may just be a coincidence).
Reran drakconf, says that it detects an Epson 900 on /dev/lp0,
but still no luck with printing or redirection.
Here's some of the info we have found:
BIOS shows parallel port being set up at 0x378, with irq 7.
That is what W98 shows for port.
Rebooting into Linux, lsmod shows the lp, parport, parport_pc,
and parport_probe modules being loaded. dmesg shows the results
from the probe as detecting a Epson 900 on correct port and address.
Still no luck printing or redirecting a file. Looking at
/proc/interrupts does NOT show irq 7 assigned to parport. This
seems strange except my mdk 7.0 with a local Epson printer (which
works fine) also does not have irq 7 set.
If we rmmod the lp and parport modules and then load them by hand
with parport_pc using the io=0x378 and irq=7 options, parport_pc
causes the printer to make some noises (as it does during BIOS phase).
Still, though, no printing or redirection.
I am really at a loss. parport_probe shows the right printer being
detected and because parport_pc elicits some noise from the printer
the port is clearly right. Why won't anything come out??
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. My friend was really hot
to switch to Linux, but is about ready to bag it (though he will
try Caldera first).
One more question I have is why the irq for the parport is not
being set up (e.g., even on my working system) when conf.modules
contains the lines:
alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc
pre-install plip modprobe parport_pc ; echo 7 > /proc/parport/0/irq
Thanks for any assistance,
Norm Carver
