10.4.7 ate my printer?

benr (apparently) - 07:12am Jul 6, 2006 PST
via email

Something horrible is eating away at my printers, one by one. I think it
might be 10.4.7, but I can't be sure.

There are two printers on the ethernet network in my office, a Xerox DocuPrint
2125 PS, and a Tektronix Phaser 6250N. First the problem was with the Xerox,
which is usually my default printer; this does give me problems from time to
time, generally that it can't connect to the printer; I usually fix this by
deleting it and adding it again. Now however, this didn't work; the newly
added 'printer' now reports:
        "Unable to get printer status (client-error-forbidden)!"

All the things that sometimes helped - eg rebooting the printer, rebooting my
Mac, deleting the printer and adding it again - didn't. I swore a bit and
moved the jobs to the Phaser. Eventually I tired of it and decided to get
serious.

Googling around led me to the "Reset Printing System" in the Printer Setup
Utility. Trashes everything - I didn't care, I was mad enough to try it.
Added the Xerox again - same problem. More upsettingly, when I added the
Phaser - it was now in the same situation! That is, the status of the printer is
        "Unable to get printer status (client-error-forbidden)!"

I then tried "Printer Setup Repair" (PSR)
<http://www.fixamacsoftware.com/software/psr5/> - the first time I tried the
"System User Verification and Repair" this found a number of exciting
permissions errors, and one missing file "/private/etc/cups/classes.conf". I
took a copy of that file from a colleague, also running 10.4.7 on an identical
model PowerBook (aluminium G4). Ran PSR verification and repair again (which
corrected permissions and ownership on my grafted-in file) - no better off. I
also went through all the other sections of PSR, cleaned verified and emptied
everything I could, and rebooted again. No better.

By now I had been inducted into the mysteries of CUPS, and had restarted that
as well, and had the benefit of its web interface... but poking around there
didn't improve the situation in any way.

I've also run the repair permissions feature in Disk Utility.

I may be wrong in pinning the blame on 10.4.7 - although other people have
reported printing issues since the update, none have reported exactly this
issue - and none of my colleagues, printing on the same network to the same
printers, have as far as I know had the problem either. However, the problem
seems to be (I can't be sure) specifically something that comes in when you
add the printer - ie my Phaser printer was OK until I unwisely trashed it and
added it again.

So... can anyone shed any light, or suggests something else to try?

I have finally acquired printing capability again, by adding the Phaser as a
Bonjour item instead of an IP Printer (the Xerox is an older machine and
doesn't show up under Bonjour). My always flakey memory tells me that I used
to sometimes have better luck addressing either the Xerox or Phaser by
AppleTalk instead of IP - but that doesn't seem to be offered any more. Has
this been removed in 10.4.7 - or am I just imagining it, perhaps
misremembering using Rendesvous?

Thanks in advance for any tips,

   Ben Rubinstein | Email: benrcogapp.com
   Cognitive Applications Ltd | Phone: +44 (0)1273-821600
   http://www.cogapp.com | Fax : +44 (0)1273-728866