printing, Abiword

[Larry Kollar]

Cynthia Croy <clc2@ix.netcom.com> wrote:

> I'm still determined to make my printer work, ... I'm running YDL 2.2 and I
> have an Apple Laserwriter Select 310. The problem I'm having is that
> when I try to print, I get the message "Cannot open connection to
> localhost. Network is unreachable. Make sure LPD server is running."

At first blush, that would indicate that inetd (Internet daemon)
isn't running. Can you access the Internet in any other way from
Linux -- mail, web, FTP, anything?  What does your /etc/printcap
file look like? You can either edit printcap directly or use
printtool (which I did) for a GUI-based setup.

How is the LaserWriter connected to your machine? (USB, serial, Ethernet)


> 1) The file /etc/lpd.conf has # in front of every line. From what little
> I know of programming, # usually signals a comment and therefore
> something the program should ignore.

Not a problem, that's what I have.


> 2) I've seen the following commands in association with helping printing
> problems: ntsysv, checkpc, checkpd. I've tried all of them as well as
> /sbin/ in front of each, and Linux tells me command not found. I may not
> be calling them correctly, but only checkpc has a man entry.

The "whereis" command is your friend:
$ whereis ntsysv
ntsysv: /usr/sbin/ntsysv

If that doesn't work, did you by chance do a minimum YDL install?


> 3) I don't think I see "settup up interface lo      [OK]"  or anything
> similar at startup. ... is there a way to see a record of this
> after startup? I didn't see it in dmesg.

You're right; there seems to be no record of the system starting
up the loopback interface in either dmesg or /var/log/messages.
Try  /sbin/ifconfig  to see if loopback is running.


> 4) /etc/rc3.d, /etc/rc5.d, /etc/rc.d/rc3.d, and /etc/rc.d/rc5.d all have
> K60lpd in them. I learned in a post on the YDL list that "K" stands for
> kill - I don't think I want lpd killed. I use runlevel 3, but I thought
> I would check the runlevel 5 entries just in case it was different.

If there's no corresponding Sxxlpd (start lpd) in the rc3.d
directory, that might be your problem. Before you do anything
else, try doing  ps ax | grep lpd  to see if the server is
running.

If it's not running, the fastest way to fix that is (as root):

  mv K60lpd S60lpd
  ./S60lpd start 

If you do  ls -l  or  ls -F  you'll see that all the files in
those directories are links to files in /etc/rc.d/init.d and
the K links point to the same files as the S links. So changing
the name should be sufficient.



> Abiword won't run. I have the version (0.7) which came with YDL 2.2, and
> the current version compiled from the source code downloaded from their
> website. I have three executables:
> 
> /usr/lib/AbiSuite/bin/AbiWord_d - which tries to launch 0.7
> /usr/local/AbiSuite/bin/AbiWord_d - which tries to launch 1.0.1
> /home/Cindy/abiword-1.0.1/abi/src/Linux_2.4.18-0.8a_ppc_GNOME/bin/AbiWord_d
> - which tries to lauch 1.0.1
> Choosing Abiword from the Gnome applications menu tries to launch 0.7.

You should also have a wrapper called simply  AbiWord  that sets
up a few things before actually launching the application.

> I was getting a message about "Abiword was not able to add its fonts to
> the X font path. ... you will need to modify the font path manually. See
> Unix font problem in FAQ."

I get that too; clicking OK starts the application.

> Then "Abiword could not find any local files
> in its font path. Often this is the result of invoking Abiword directly
> instead of through its wrapper shell script.

That's exactly the the problem -- starting abiword directly
instead of using the wrapper script.  At the command line,
type  which AbiWord  and see which version it starts.

BTW, if you use apt-get or yup, you should end up with the 0.99.4
version. It's not the latest, but it's a LOT farther along than 0.7.
But since you've already compiled & installed 1.0.1, just dump the
RPM version (rpm -e abiword), do  which AbiWord  to get the location
of the shell script, then edit Gnome's menu (don't know how, I use
KDE or AfterStep) to launch AbiWord instead of abiword_d.


That should get you started. :-)

-- 
Larry Kollar   k o l l a r  at  a l l t e l . n e t
"Content creators are the engine that drives value in the
information life cycle."   -- Barry Schaeffer, on XML-Doc