Bug 76684

Summary:	Unable to load printer driver when trying to add a printer
Product:	[Unmaintained] kcontrol	Reporter:	Marcus Sundman <sundman>
Component:	kcmprintmgr	Assignee:	KDEPrint Devel Mailinglist <kde-print-devel>
Status:	RESOLVED UNMAINTAINED
Severity:	normal	CC:	finex
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Debian testing
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Marcus Sundman 2004-03-03 20:07:40 UTC

Version:            (using KDE KDE 3.1.5)
Installed from:    Debian testing/unstable Packages
OS:          Linux

I can't add a new printer in the Printing Manager.
Steps:
- Right-click and choose "Add Printer/Class..."
- Press "Next"
- Select "Network printer (TCP)" and press "Next"
- Type in the IP and port and press "Next"
- Select "Manufacturer: HP" and "Model: LaserJet 4050" and press "Next"
- Select "HP LaserJet 4050 (Foomatic + Postscript) [recommended]" and press "Next"
- After a few seconds an error message pops up, saying:
"Unable to load the requested driver:
Unable to create the Foomatic driver
[HP-LaserJet_4050,Postscript]. Either that driver does not
exist, or you don't have the required permissions to perform
that operation."

The only thing that is printed to the console is "Line 0: parse error", which it prints at some point after running /usr/bin/foomatic-datafile. (foomatic-datafile outputs a PPD file, although this is unnecessary since I already have a better PPD file, but I don't know how to tell the damn Printing Manager to use my PPD file instead.)

Comment 1 Dmitry Vukolov 2004-03-03 22:17:56 UTC

You should update foomatic to version 3.0.1 or higher.

Quoting the changelog for 3.0.1:
"Let foomatic-ppdfile (which can be also called under the name
"foomatic-datafile", for compatibility with frontends) accept
and ignore the "-t" option for backwards compatibility. Now
the KDE Printing Manager works correctly again."

Comment 2 Marcus Sundman 2004-03-04 16:20:57 UTC

I have version 3.0.1 of foomatic. As I said, the error happens AFTER running foomatic-datafile. If I'd tried it with an older version of foomatic then the error would have happened when running foomatic-datafile.

Comment 3 Marcus Sundman 2004-03-04 16:38:01 UTC

I have fixed the problem. I had forgot choose "Print system currently used: CUPS (Common UNIX Print System)" on the main page.

This has now happened twice to me, and both times I got completely unhelpful error messages. Both times I spent a lot of time trying to track down the error. Both times I've also had several other experienced linux users trying to fix it, but they were equally baffled about why it didn't work on this computer when it worked fine on another computer when performing the exact same steps in the Add Printer wizard.

I suggest to:
1) move the "Print system currently used" drop-down list to the top of the page where people might actually see it, and
2) fix the error messages to reflect the actual error.

Comment 4 Marcus Sundman 2004-07-13 03:45:34 UTC

Over 4 months now and nothing...
(Also, if I choose "Print system currently user: CUPS" when I don't have CUPS running it says "Connection to CUPS server failed. [...] connection refused." but still it says "Connected to localhost:631" below the selector. Great piece of software.)

Comment 5 Andrew Crouthamel 2018-09-04 18:06:48 UTC

Hello! Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but this project has been unmaintained for many years so I am closing this bug. Kcontrol has been replaced by System Settings in Plasma. Please give the latest version of that a try, and open a new bug in "systemsettings" if you continue to have an issue. Thank you!