Hi Folks,
This evening I downloaded the ISO for Ubuntu 6.10 (the latest), burnt it to CD, and gave it a whirl (using the CD as a live CD).
Quite a lot of fun really -- this is designed to appeal! But I had a weird experience with printing.
I used the GUI to add a printer. It autodetected my HP Laserjet 1300 and proposed (which I accepted) the PostScript driver for it.
Then I opened one of its Examples files (an Open Office "doc") in OpenOffice Writer ("Word" to you ...), and tried printing it. Nothing happened.
'lpq' showed that the job was queued and printing, but nothing happened at the printer.
Eventually, I killed the job with 'lprm', went back to the document, and printed it to file "test.ps". I checked (using "less") that this was PostScript.
Then, at the console (Ctrl-Alt-F1, user = "ubuntu"), I tried
lpr test.ps
and nothing happened. I then tried
cat test.ps > /dev/lp0
and got "Permission denied". So I tried (being aware of the issue)
sudo cat test.ps >/dev/lp0
with the same result. Permissions on /dev/lp0 were something like (should have written it down ... )
rw- rw- --- root root
So I bit the bullet, executed
sudo passwd root
thus creating a "normal" root account. The I logged in as root, cd'd to /home/ubuntu, and again did
cat test.ps > /dev/lp0
and this time it worked. This suggests that "ordinary" users ("ubuntu" in this case) don't have permission to print -- no doubt there's a work-round, but it was not offered up in the printer installation dialogue.
But when (still as root) I did
lpr test.ps
I got the message that no printer was available! So it looks as though resources like a printer are set up on a per-user basis!
This all strikes me as a weird and bewildering tangle. I find Ubuntu's marginalising of root irritating anyway, but the rest of it seems just crazy. And this is supposed to be "Linux for the masses" ...
Maybe I've misunderstood something, or missed some obvious trick, so I'd welcome comments.
In case it may be relevant: when I booted off the CD, I chose the "Safe Graphics Mode" option.
With thanks, Ted.
-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) ted.harding@nessie.mcc.ac.uk Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 18-Feb-07 Time: 22:00:45 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------