[SOLVED] New installation fails to see USB printer

[tarazed]

Three successful installs of 64bit Mageia 4. Time to upgrade my 32bit Toshiba, running
Mageia 2 up to yesterday. Clean install, went well, but no luck with the Canon iP90
which had been working fine yesterday afternoon before the installation and for the past
two years. After hours of gnashing teeth the printer is still invisible to CUPS or
Turboprint. No USB printers are detected by CUPS but the HP network printers are found
no bother and are accessible. dmesg reports when the USB printer is plugged and
unplugged so it is definitely there. In CUPS I went through the process of adding a
printer manually, company -> driver -> default options -> testpage -> nada. lsmod shows
that module lpusb is loaded and the ip90 shows up in harddrake2 at the end of the list
(other devices).

This portable printer is very useful out of the house in a club context and is far too
expensive to dump (£300).

So, what steps to take to force CUPS or Turboprint to recognize USB?

[tarazed]

This is the tail end of dmesg when the printer is plugged in:

Code: Select all

[ 5776.148514] usbcore: registered new interface driver usblp
[ 6128.000139] usb 2-1: USB disconnect, device number 2
[ 6150.367067] usb 2-1: new full-speed USB device number 3 using uhci_hcd
[ 6150.528110] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=04a9, idProduct=109d
[ 6150.528120] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 6150.528128] usb 2-1: Product: iP90
[ 6150.528134] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Canon
[ 6150.528141] usb 2-1: SerialNumber: 107B08
[ 6150.535215] usblp 2-1:1.0: usblp1: USB Bidirectional printer dev 3 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04A9 pid 0x109D
[ 6155.934611] usblp1: removed
[ 6155.956065] usblp 2-1:1.0: usblp1: USB Bidirectional printer dev 3 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x04A9 pid 0x109D


[doktor5000]

Do you know if the usblp module is really required for your printer or for turboprint?
I'd try to blacklist it as in the past it conflicted with quite a lot of driver.

[tarazed]

No, I really do not have any idea. I continued experimenting and at one point picked up a URI which appeared out of nowhere. CUPS found no printers so I tried the new URI in Turboprint. Since there was a choice between parallel printers and others only I chose 'others' and supplied the URI usb://Canon/iP90?serial=107B08 in the faint hope it might lead somewhere then selected Canon and the simplified iP90 driver (not the one I needed actually) and attempted to print a test page. I tried that mny times throughout the afternoon, sometimes pulling out power or USB cables and replacing them but nothing worked. The message was "Printer not connected or powered off". In the end I installed the latest version of Turboprint, on trial, and performed the previous procedures two or three times again and suddenly the test page started coming out! This sounds downright irrational to me so I have little confidence in this printer queue. Will see if it survives a reboot or two. A world away from HPLIP. My network printers practically installed themselves! Seconds instead of 24 hours.
If the ip90 continues to work I shall mark the thread as solved even though there is no real explanation for my troubles.

[tarazed]

Blacklisting usblp did not help. After a reboot I was again unable to establish a connection with the printer. Tried CUPS again. No dice, with or without usblp. Looks like it is a dead duck. HP do supply so-called mobile printers, a lot bigger and heavier than the ip90 though. Will have to cut my losses and get one of those unless Zedonet (Turbo) have any ideas. Will try them maybe.

[doktor5000]

Maybe you're also affected by https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_4_Err ... pt_filters ...

[tarazed]

A possibility. Need to do some digging when there is time. There was one interesting comment about reverting to a component used in Mageia 2; the printer was working in Mageia 2. I shall take a break on this problem for a while. Thanks for your help.

[tarazed]

Zedonet had the answer; all that was needed was the addition of the line

Code: Select all

TP_USB_MODE=1

to the /etc/turboprint/system.cfg file and then switch the printer off and on. Immediate success - the iP90 was listed.