A new installation of debian squeeze, and I find that while I can print
from lp, a2ps, and iceweasel, Print Buffer command in emacs (without any
init file) reports "Spooling...done", but the job gets stuck in the
queue.

The report of lpq shows that this job is first in the queue and has an
"Active" Rank.

In /var/spool/lpd/lp/ are the two files for that job.

        $ sudo cat cfA035engels
        Hengels
        Phaines
        Jjunk Emacs buffer
        Cengels
        fdfA035engels
        UdfA035engels
        N

        $ sudo cat dfA035engels
        2010-11-01 00:38   junk Emacs buffer  Page 1
        test file

The name of the file I'm trying to print is "junk". What is this "N"?
Otherwise, the two files look normal to my uninformed eye.

The /var/spool/lpd/lp/lock has:
 
        4597
        cfA034engels

So apparently the job is locked, but I have no idea why. Cutting that
job number does not help. Neither does restarting CUPS after clearing
the queue.

Incidentally, lprm job# fails to remove jobs from queue, and instead I
have to use lprm (user name) to remove all the jobs at once.

I inadvertantly stopped lpd, and tried to start it again with:

  $ sudo /etc/init.d/lpd restart
  lpd: port # restart is invalid

The lpq tells me "no daemon present", but I can nevertheless print pages
from iceweasel and with lp. Don't they need a print daemon? How can I
get the daemon running again?


Haines Brown

Problem resolved. I was unaware that if lpr were installed with cups, it
might conflict with cups' spooling system. My cups was feeding into
lpr's spooler, and so it turned out not to have been an emacs
issue. Sorry to have burdened the list with it.

Haines Brown