Bug 102932

No more info and nothing from the logs except "it doesn't work"?

Is you parallel port correctly configured?
See the printed 9.1 manual or
and
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2000/08/jsmeix_print-einrichten.html
"Prerequisites"
and
http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2002/04/jsmeix_print-device-parallel.html
how to set up the parallel port.

Use commads like
  dmesg | grep -i 'parport' | tail -n 100
or
  grep -i 'parport' /var/log/messages | tail -n 100
to get the last 100 (error)-messages regarding the parallel port.

The following is what is repeated from the dmesg query:
lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven).
parport: PnPBIOS parport detected.
parport0: PC-style at 0x378, irq 7 [PCSPP,TRISTATE,EPP]

The same hardware configuration, booted with 9.1, works fine.
I believe the bios and printer are set up correctly.

Please let me know if you further information.

On the one hand it looks good because your parport was
autodetected and it seems to be set up (in particular
the lp module is loaded).

On the other hand I miss an output of the printer model
like on my test machine:
------------------------------------------------------------
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE,EPP]
parport0: irq 7 detected
parport0: Printer, HEWLETT-PACKARD DESKJET 990C
lp0: using parport0 (polling).
------------------------------------------------------------

Check your BIOS whether there is really the IO port 0x378 set
and check your BIOS whether there is really the interrupt 7 set.
See the above mentioned support database articles how to set it up
using the recommended polling mode.

Questions:

Can you configure the printer manually in YaST?
Does it print the YaST test-page after you selected
the connection (i.e. first parallel port) and the
model manually in YaST?

Does it print "hello" using (as root):
echo -en "\rhello\r\f" >/dev/lp0

First attempt to execute your echo test failed.
I had already done a manual setup through Yast as the install did not detect the
printer.
The hardware appears to be set correctly.
As I said before, this same hardware works without change on my 9.1 installation
I can boot into.

Yast does not print out the test page.

Yast shows the "Connection" as "Parallel printer on /dev/lp0"

An ls -l of /dev/lp0 shows "crw-rw----  1 root lp 6, 0 2005-08-15 19:37 /dev/lp0"

I've never seen this not work so I am baffled. Any thing else you can think of
for me to try?

*** Update ***
I rebooted and now the echo outputs to the printer.
Additional reboots show the echo test of output direct to /dev/lp0 as root works.

The "Test Text Printing" page from Yast still does not print.

Yesterday I tested parallel port printing on x86_64 hardware
and here I detected that the kernel-module "lp" becomes
unloaded during startup of the YaST printer config tool.

To verify on your machine do as root:

lsmod | egrep 'lp|parport'

and you should get at least the modules parport, parport_pc, lp

Now start YaST printer config tool and do again "lsmod | egrep 'lp|parport'"
and you may see that now lp is missing.
If yes, do "modprobe lp" and testpage printing in YaST should work.

Added YaST printer config tool maintainer to Cc.

See bug #104874 which may show the reason of this problem.
And see bug #104875 which is another problem.

The condition you described is the problem. After a modprobe lp to put back the
driver the test page works fine.
I guess the problem is the Yast printer config tool.
Thanks.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 104874 ***