[gentoo-dev] printing-howto

[Dave Gudeman]

I just did a printer install with a parport printer. It was a nightmare 
because I was trying to do it without reading all the necessary 
documentation, and the gentoo printing-howto didn't help since it made the 
same wrong assumption I did: that the printer device is /dev/lp0. I think 
there is some devfs compatibility mode where this works, but in general with 
devfs the printer is at /dev/printers/0. Once I discovered this, magic 
happened.

Anyway, you might want to add the following to the printing-howto:
--------------
The device for the printer is /dev/printers/0, not /dev/lp0 (unless you have 
the devfs compatibility stuff).

To activate the modules for parallel port printers:

  insmod parport
  insmod parport_pc
  insmod lp

However, you should probably mention that module autoloading will take care of 
this once you get cups set up, I thought originally that I had to add these 
to modules.autoload or something similar.

You don't have to do anything special for KDE, they automatically recognize 
cups printers.