Local printers not supported

[Michael Hirsch]

On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 10:14 AM, Eberhard Roloff<tuxebi at gmx.de> wrote:
> Michael Hirsch wrote:
>> I'm trying to help my Dad with a problem.  He's using KDE 3.5.x and
>> his USB printer stopped working.  He can see the printer with "lsusb"
>> so it would appear that USB works, but when he tries to add the
>> printer with the KDE Add Printer Wizard, the choice "Local printer
>> (parallel, serial, USB)" is deactivated.  He can't press the radio
>> button to enable it.  The other radio buttons are all active except
>> for "Serial Fax/Modem printer".
>>
>
> What does "stopped working" mean?

It used to work, and now it doesn't.

> Why does he need to add an apparently existing printer?

The printer is defined, but not functional.  One approach I gave him
was to try to define it again.  Also, he took the printer to my Mom's
computer which is also running Kubuntu and tried to install it there
with the same symptom.

Strangely, when he tries to edit the currently defined printer, it is
defined to be a local printer, but the local printer field is greyed
out and not functional.
>
> You might try with http://localhost:631 and see, whether you
> can reenable the printer and print a testpage from there.

I'll see if I can talk him through that.  It's tricky because he lives
far away, so this is all phone support.

Thanks,

Michael