Originally Posted by qole

If you also install and configure Samba in Easy Debian, you can print to Windows printers...

Originally Posted by jsbigs

Not having luck with this. Getting command not found after typing in lpstat -a in debian chroot terminal.

Tried running /etc/init.d/cups start to no avail.

I then noticed cups was in /etc and not in init.d so I moved it into init.d and am getting a "cups is a directory" error, after putting in the script to start cups after restart.

Originally Posted by les_garten

Are you referring to Cifs in your repository?

Originally Posted by rebhana

Encouraged by this account of easy-debian and its actual usefulness:

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=41605

and the fact that easy-debian has moved up into Extras, I installed easy-debian (see also
http://wiki.maemo.org/Easy_Debian )

Easy-Debian has gimp and openoffice with printing support, but to my initial disappointment no CUPS, the Unix printing system for network printers. However, it was really easy to install on top of it (in the Debian environment, not the XTerminal, where you wouldn't find cups yet!):

Code:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cups
sudo apt-get clean

("sudo" is superfluous when done from Debian chroot instead of a terminal within Debian LXDE)

Although a disturbingly long list of packages got installed automatically in the process, it reduced the available space for the Debian system by only 10% or so. There were also some warnings and even "fatal" errors when installing and starting cups, but it came out completely functional.

And it brought the printing (cups) support I was hoping for to openoffice. However, what I was really longing for was the possibility to print things I download in Maemo. Now, with Debian chroot I can do so rather easily, and I don't have to wait any longer for cups appearing within Maemo proper some time in the future.

So to those still waiting for cups, as I did, I can recommend doing the same. Install easy-deb-chroot and then cups within that! Postscript and pdf files downloaded on the N900 can subsequently be printed out by opening the Debian chroot terminal, so no need to start the LXDE (which I found somewhat tedious to use, despite its coolness factor).

In Debian chroot, I just do "su - user" to switch to /home/user and non-root identity. Then "lpstat -a" shows me the list of available network printers, and with "lp -d printername filename" I can send files to the chosen printer. Easy! And Debian!

In XTerminal, one can run single easy-debian commands like the above (as user) by e.g.

Code:

debbie lp -d printername /home/user/.../filename

Or if it's a word or openoffice document, "debbie ooffice" or
"debbie oowriter /home/user/.../filename" and then print out from openoffice 3 (with due patience, but much quicker than through LXDE, and for me also with correct keyboard).

I guess after my experience with packages from extras-devel that made the update to PR1.1 slightly bumpy (in fact only one package: vpnc), I now feel actually more comfortable to be able to install stuff in the Debian image and use it from there, without having to tamper with Maemo when I don't fully understand the consequences (as was the case with vpnc).

UPDATE: There is one more thing that needs to be done so that cups gets started again after one has powered down and restarted the N900:
Open Debian chroot and add a startup script for cups as follows:

Code:

echo "/etc/init.d/cups restart" >> /var/run/onfirstchroot.rc
chmod a+x /var/run/onfirstchroot.rc

If you want to do this under XTerminal, you have to instead modify or create $CHROOT/var/run/onfirstchroot.rc where $CHROOT is the Debian mountpoint. (Thanks to qole for both easy-debian and telling me about the option of startup scripts!)

Originally Posted by Graham Cobb

You may need to install the cups-client package (apt-get install cups-client).



/etc/cups is a directory, with several important control files and has nothing to do with the initialisation script which should be at /etc/init.d/cups! I suggest you move it back again.

If /etc/init.d/cups is not present, either it got deleted or the cups installation didn't work. After moving the config directory back in to /etc I would suggest:

apt-get install --reinstall cups cups-client cups-common

Graham

Originally Posted by greygoo

I just talked to a cups developer and I was told that for just printing directly to a printer there is no need at all to install cups. All that is needed is the printer .ppd driver, ghostscript and tools to create postscript files from different files like e.g. a2ps or convert. At least for network enabled printers that should work.

[description of how to generate and send files to remote printer]