NX200 printer stopped working after KDE3.5 update and KDE4 (Fixed not solved)

[Howard]

I am using an Epson NX200 three in one printer.

Yesterday while printing an Openoffice file using my everyday KDE3.5 Minime installation it stopped printing.

     Items appear in the printing queue, but don't print.
     Canceling them does not remove them from the list, but if I try to cancel again I get an "already canceled" message even so!  (Rebooting sometimes removes them, re-installing the printer always does.)
     escputil still works from root showing ink levels, so there is some communication with the printer.
     cat and lpr do not work, either as user or root although the do items appear in the queue.

I have removed and re-installed the printer several times too, without any cure.

In my KDE4 testing installation (same computer, same printer, same files) everything (regular printing, cat and lpr) works OK, but I don't want to have to rely on this, as it's experimental and inconvenient.  So I don't think it's the printer that's at fault.

I'm not really sure which piece of software does what, but both installations have the same version of CUPS (1.4.2-1), while the KDE4 has one later version of Gutenprint and printerdrake.

Since cat and lpr don't work I don't think it can be CUPS or Gutenprint anyway, I'm not sure about printerdrake.  However I didn't want to re-install that as it's a later version and may not work in KDE3.5 adding to the problem.

I have searched the fora as well as the search engine permits and cannot find anyone who has had a similar problem.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Howard]

Here's an update!

In the end I decided to reinstall minime 2009.1 on that partition and, as it doesn't have any printing applications included, they had to be added.  These are later versions than the original that worked, and I had the same problem: the printing gets to the printer queue and just stops.  However, I can now cancel, and as before the escputil routine tells me the ink levels.

I can, however, print the same file from the same installation on my Brother HL-20 downstairs via the network, and that prints OK.  (It was clever enough to discover that remote option all by itself!)

I then thought that maybe there was something missing in minime that I hadn't added, so tried the full 2009.2; that worked initially, but not after I had updated, and still failed when I converted it to KDE4.

So it seems there is a bug somewhere in the Epson driver.

But, oddly, the one working installation that will print to the NX200 is my test KDE4 one and it has exactly the same versions of printerdrake and gutenprint as the one that fails.  However, that has other faults, mostly due to my experimentation while I was trying out how KDE4 worked, and isn't fully working to my liking.  (Wine doesn't work for example.)

The only truly stable installation I have is the trusty old 2007, but that was too early to have the NX200 drivers.  (My love-hate relationship is rather on the latter side at present!)

[skyhawk]

I am running PCLinuxOS 2009.4 LXDE and my printer is an HP LaserJet P1006 (HPLIP installed), so my hardware is not the same as your's, but I did have my printer suddenly go 'kaput' one day for no obvious reason, other than I might have tried to choose a printer setting in "HP Device Manager" that was out-of-range. So, I looked for the simplest solution first. Scanning through /etc/cups/, I saw that a new printers.conf had been written to disk, with the old file being name printers.conf.old. The new printers.conf had an error message contained in it; something about "foo-rip failed". I removed the new printers.conf file, renamed printers.conf.old to printers.conf, and I was back in business. Problem solved. Look at your basic configuration files first, before doing a complete re-install of the printer.

[Howard]

Thanks skyhawk for pointing me in the right direction. 

I compared printer.conf in the working installation with the one in the non working one.  There were two differences, I extract the crucial lines:

Working:

Info EPSON Stylus NX200
MakeModel Epson Stylus NX200 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.4
DeviceURI usb://EPSON/Stylus%20NX200
State Idle

Non working:

Info EPSON Stylus NX200
Location
MakeModel Epson Stylus NX200 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.4
DeviceURI usb:/dev/usb/lp1
State Idle

As you see, the DeviceURI's are different, and there is an extra line with the word "Location", which probably doesn't matter. (Incidentally /dev/usb/lp1 is the location I have to give to escputil.)

When I copied the printer.conf file from the working installation to the non working one the problem was solved.

So now I know how to fix it, but not why.   How did two installations of essentially the same system produce two different configuration files?  Clearly there is a bug somewhere - but I'm not the one to try to sort that out.  I was obviously lucky that I did have one working installation.

[skyhawk]

Definitely looks like a driver bug to me. Hopefully it will be corrected in an upcoming version, just as HPLIP has been improving from release-to-release.