Printer problems

[VStrider]

i have a printer locally connected on parallel port. i installed it, as locally connected, the utility detected the printer and the correct drivers, and i've set it up as the default printer and no sharing(its a single pc). printed a test page and it works fine.

however when i try to print from different apps, like openoffice, gimp etc. they only see a Generic Printer. when i try to print nothing happens. i added my user to lp group, tried again, still the same.

any ideas?

[owakroeger]

In OpenOffice, for example, in File>PrinterSetup> , if you click on the down arrow beside 'generic printer' do you see anything else?
owa

[VStrider]

nope, just generic printer.

Edit: it says:
Name: Generic Printer
Status: Default printer
Type: SGENPRT

[owakroeger]

Open System Settings>Printing Make sure that your printer you want to use is set as default. If you only have one printer on your system, I would be tempted to delete all but the printer you want, and make sure it is named as default.
owa

[AndyGreen]

What does

service cups status

say?

[owakroeger]

It should say something pretty much like this;
$ /sbin/service cups status
cupsd (pid 3565) is running...
owa

[VStrider]

thanks guys, that fixed it.

when i was setting up the printer, i chose locally instead of cups, so i thought cups is not needed and stopped the service.

now, cups opens tcp/udp 631. is the printer available on the internet? or it only uses these ports on a loopback interface?

if its the former, can i configure cups to close these ports?

[AndyGreen]

You have a local firewall to control what goes out into the world for just this kind of situation.

If your firewall is up, nothing external can touch tcp or udp 631 because the firewall bans them first.

So if you don't want them externally (ie, by ANY machine other than yours, local or internet) touchable, you're all set. If you do want to allow them to be touched by some people, the firewall gives you some nice ways to do that, eg,

iptables -I INPUT -p tcp --dport 631 -s 192.168.0.0/24 -j ACCEPT
iptables -I INPUT -p udp --dport 631 -s 192.168.0.0/24 -j ACCEPT

is only going to let 192.168.0.* guys touch your cups, even if you are directly on the Internet only those guys can even see port 631 is listening.

The firewall is going to slam to door on everything unless you do a command like that shown above to say exactly what is okay.

[owakroeger]

Also, in System-config-printer>Action>Sharing you have the ability to share or not share this printer. This will do a redundancy of what Andy just said, only from the print-queue side of things. This will also control sharing of this printer with any who share your router.
owa

[VStrider]

i use firestarter, and it looks like these ports are stealthed from the internet. (i did a check on sygate website)
don't wanna delve into iptables just yet, too many things to learn, i'll leave that for later. :)

thanks again for your help!