Bugzilla – Bug 258790
Printing to parallel printer hangs X11 Session
Last modified: 2007-03-29 10:39:40 UTC
I have an Apple LaserSelect 360 Printer connected via the parallel port to my Desktop machine. I run KDE 3.5.6 "release 41.4" on OpenSuse 10.2 using the default cups printer daemon. The printer is set up to use the gutenberg driver (Apple LaserWriter Select 360 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.0 Simplified) as recommended during setup. All packages installed are up to date. I have used this printer without any problems in many distros, inlcuding Mandrake and Suse 10.0 and 10.1. When I print e.g. a pdf file to the printer and leave the machine alone (no typing or movinf the mouse) 9 in 10 cases the printing is going through with out a hitch. However, when I use the machine and I print at the same time, 8 in 10 cases the mouse freezes and the machine does not respond anymore. I have to do a cold restart as I ca not log in from another machine via ssh. Log files fo X as well as cups do not show anyhting. I have gotten into the habbilt to print as little as possible which is a bit annoying, especially since this is the only printer in the my lab serving 2 more machines... Any help would be greatly appreciated. Cheers Juergen
System hangup => kernel related area. There are some bug reports about problems with the parallel port in our Novell/Suse Bugzilla. A good report to start is bug #185135. See also the other bug reports which are mentioned there. Something seems to be fishy with the parallel port stuff in the kernels since Suse Linux 10.0. The current workaround is to experiment with various BIOS settings and explicite additional settings in /etc/modprobe.conf to find a setup, which actually works in a particular problematic case. Note that e.g. for scanning you may have to use a higher-level parport mode (some kind of fast bidirectional mode) and additionally the kernel module ppdev may have to be loaded for some software (e.g. for HPLIP and for SANE). Note that those modes (EPP or even ECP) normally require an interrupt and ECP additionally requires DMA. To activate the interrupt mode, set in /etc/modprobe.conf something like "options parport_pc io=0x378 irq=7" where io and irq must match to your BIOS settings. Make sure that the IRQ which you use for the parallel port is not used by any other stuff, see our online documentation (package suselinux-manual_en or opensuse-manual_en) chapter "Printer Operation", section "Troubleshooting", sub-section "Parallel Ports". *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 185135 ***
By the way: If it fails only for one particular PDF, then it should be no kernel related (i.e. parport) problem but something else. In this case, reopen this bug and attach the PDF to this bug so that we have a chance to reproduce it.