[CLUE-Tech] My printer hates me

[Kevin Cullis]

Matt,

I had the same problem with a SuSe distro and basically did the same
troubleshooting.  What I found was that I did a ktop & in a term window
and selected the "Show Tree" of the processes and found a Ghostscript
daemon running even after I had killed off everything else, or so I
thought.  SuSe has spawned a prn process off of lpd and I didn't see it
until I did the above.  What clued me into this was Jeff Cann pointing
out that his system died and he rebooted and the system kept printing
without crashing.

Hope this helps.

Kevin

Matt Gushee wrote:
> 
> Hi, folks--
> 
> Well, I did it again ... killed a running print job (because I was
> going to print out way more than I wanted). Maybe some day I'll learn,
> because
> 
>     The blasted thing prints out page after page after page of
>     <garbage line>, <form feed>, <garbage line>, <form feed>
> 
>     and
>     AFTER I:
>     cleared the print queue (# lprm - , so it should have gotten
>         everything)
>     killed lpd
>     turned off the printer
>     unplugged the printer cable
>     and the power cord
>     waited a minute or so
>     plugged everything back in
>     turned on the printer
>     restarted lpd
> 
>     The damn thing continues (it's been about half an hour -- I keep
>         stuffing in the same wad of paper so's not to waste too much)!
> 
> So my first question is:
> 
>    Regardless of what's actually causing this, is there a cure or
>        workaround in my lpr configuration? Or do I just have to chuck
>        the printer out the window?
> 
>    The printer, by the way, is a Xerox DocuPrint XJ6C. Not the
>        smartest purchase I've ever made. But it had a three-year
>        warranty and came with separate cartridges for each color.
>        After I bought it I found out that, though there's an HP
>        driver that works reasonably well with this model, Xerox had
>        flat-out refused either to write a Linux driver for it or to
>        release the specs to Linux developers -- not only that, their
>        NT driver won't print anything with even slightly unusual
>        margin settings. Now, of course, we all know how fscked-up
>        Xerox is ...
> 
> Sorry to rant. Anyway, my second question is, in the near future when
>    I've finally had enough of this printer, can anyone recommend a
>    low-cost printer that works well with Linux?
> 
>    Whatever printer I buy has to produce crisp, professional-looking
>    B&W text; good graphics would be nice, but are a low priority.
> 
>    If possible, I'd like one that has separate color cartridges.
> 
> Plz hlp.
> 
> Matt Gushee
> 
> 
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