Udev ate my printer
19.01.2006 0:06
It's almost midnight, I've just spent 5 straight hours writing a report for one of the term projects I've been working on and now I just have to print it.
No problem. I click on the Print button, but the printer remains silent. Great, why must things always break when you need them the most? Some 5 minutes later, I dig out this from /dev/log:
Jan 18 23:38:50 orion lpd[9645]: /dev/lp0: No such file or directory Jan 18 23:39:30 orion lpd[9669]: /dev/lp0: No such file or directory Jan 18 23:40:18 orion lpd[10641]: /dev/lp0: No such file or directory
WTF?!
Ok, no problem. Some broken script obviously wiped out some of my device files. Luckily, I still have MAKEDEV, right?
orion:/dev# MAKEDEV lp .udevdb presence implies active udev. Aborting MAKEDEV invocation.
Argh. So MAKEDEV thinks that udev should take care of device files and udev obviously only cares about fancy new stuff like USB and Firewire. How on earth am I supposed to use my printer on the parallel port? I don't remember the major and minor numbers for the lp0 device and I don't feel like greping the kernel source right now. Maybe there's another lp0 somewhere?
avian@orion:/dev$ locate lp0 /home/avian/morphix/live/dev/lp0
Finally! I knew that all that junk in my home directory will someday turn useful. A quick edit of the /etc/printcap and the printer begins churning out first pages of my report.
I guess it's time to switch to CUPS or something.
