Part 2 of: printer moved to new location= CUPS cannot find its drivers anymore

[M. Fioretti]

On Mon, Jan 31, 2022 15:12:31 PM -0600, Keith wrote:
> On 1/31/22 12:17 PM, Marco Fioretti wrote:
> > Hello all,
> > 
> > A couple years ago I bought an EPSON XP-4100 printer/scanner, attached
> > it to an USB port of my Ubuntu Desktop and it was detected and worked
> > with little or no problems.
> > 
> > Last week, changes in home furniture forced me to move that printer from
> > below my desk to the room where the ADSL modem is. So I attached it to
> > the USB port of the modem, configured the latter to share the printer on
> > the LAN,and the modem said OK, RECOGNIZED that it is an EPSON XP-4100
> > and said printer now usable from modem.ip.address:631/printers/printer-name
> > 
> > Then I opened the CUPS server of my desktop, locahost:631, went to "add
> > printer", chose ipp (via http) as connectio method, and provided the
> > network address above.
> > 
> > The problem is that my when I enter the printer maker to choose the
> > driver in my local CUPS, it does NOT list Epson XP-4100 as an available
> > driver. Which is not true, because that same CUPS server had been using
> > that same printer for 2 years without problems, until I unplugged it and
> > attached it to the modem port.
> > 
> > What the hell happened, and how to fix it? I **have** read around how to
> > install epson drivers, but why should I do it in the first place? Did
> > removing the printer erase its drivers too? If so, why on Earth? Stupid
> > move, it would be. And in any case, I downloaded the .deb package from
> > the Epson website to reinstall, but could not do it because broken
> > dependencies (on Ubuntu 21.04) on the lsb package. This is where I am
> > right now. Any step towards a solution, and an explanation or hypothesis
> > of what actually happened and why, would be REALLY welcome...
> > 
> > TIA,
> > Marco
> > 
> > 
> FYI, 21.04 reached EOL on Jan. 20, so you're running a release that
> won't be getting any more updates.

Thanks to Keith and the others who answered. Typical of my bad luck to
fall in a hole like this just when a release hits EOL. As partial update:

1) I could not update that machine yet, because I have a deadline this
week (which is also the reason why I had not answered yet, sorry!) and
must pospone any distro update after that (*). I confess I don't
remember what reason forced me last summer to install a non-LTS
release, but this is the last time, for the foreseable future...

2) As a patch, I went "sudo apt --fix-broken install" to route around
the problem described in m original post. The result is that now the
driver IS listed, and I can print... but the quality is not optimal,
and above all I can print one job at a time. After I print, CUPS says
the printer is "paused" and I have to power it on and off to print
another job. Thanks in advance for anybody who can explain why and how
to fix it. For my personal enlightenment if nothing else, until I can
upgrade, and assuming that will fix the problem for good...

TIA,
		Marco

(*) because for me (and more than a few others who said "me too" when
they read the post) every distro update means wasting the best part of
a week on this mess. But that is another story, for another day:
https://stop.zona-m.net/2022/01/the-sorry-sorry-state-of-linux-packaging/

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