printer has "disappeared"

[Armin Singer]

There is a serial line printer known to the system as "lp1" connected to /dev/tty2b3.
Everything worked fine for years. Nobody made changes to that.
But, one Monday morning the printer did not work any more.
Trying to re-enable it the enable commands reported:

enable: printer "lp1" has disappeared!

What the hell does this mean?
Doing some investigations I found that the printer and the cable should be ok.

Greetings,
Armin

[Alex Glennie · Accepted solution]

your error is usually caused when
one of the spooler configuration files that are created for a print queue is missing.

One of the text files for the print queue in the directories /etc/lp/member, /etc/lp/interface or /var/spool/lp/request is probably missing or could not be created ?

These files may be recreated using vi. The owner of the files is lp:lp,
and the permissions are rw-r--r--. The text inside this file will be the
device file the lp spooler is to use to send the spooler output. It will be a
local port for local serial or parallel printers and "/dev/null" (no
quotes) for remote and network printers.


vi /etc/lp/member/zeb222 #start vi and create a new file
i #enter insert mode
/dev/null #this is the text to be entered in the file
#type escape to enter command mode
:wq! #write the file to disk and leave vi
chmod 644 /etc/lp/member/zeb222 #set the correct permissions on the file
chown lp:lp /etc/lp/member/zeb222 #set the correct owner and group


If the request directory for this print queue is missing, it can be created
with the mkdir command. The owner of the directory should be
lp:lp, while the permissions should be rwxr-xr-x.

mkdir /var/spool/lp/request/zeb222 #create the directory
chmod 755 /var/spool/lp/request/zeb222 #set the permissions
chown lp:lp /var/spool/lp/request/zeb222 #set the owner and group

The file in the interface directory is a copy of an interface script that has
the name of the print queue. Check the directory /var/spool/lp/model or
/opt/hpnp/sh for the template scripts, than copy the appropriate script
to the /etc/lp/interface directory, changing the name to the print
queue. The owner of the file should be lp:bin, with permissions of
rwxr-xr-x.

cp /var/spool/lp/model/rmodel /etc/lp/interface/zeb222 #copy the script
chmod 755 /etc/lp/interface/zeb222 #set the permissions
chown lp:bin /etc/lp/interface/zeb222 #set the owner and group

lpstat -t output may also prove useful but why this occurred I do not know.

[Victor_5]

One more point.

ioscan -fnC tty
the S/W state should say "CLAIMED".

cat /etc/copyright > /dev/tty2b3
this step can ignore spooler and send file to the device file directly, it should no error if the device file is ok.

stty -a < /dev/tty2b3
you also can see the configuration of /dev/tty2b3

If you have done the above steps and did not find the problem, move to spool configuration section.

[Armin Singer]

The truth was that in fact there was a change with lp1!
Following a hint got in the forum I tried to configure a non-jetdirect printserver using SAM/jetadmin. One question I answered with "lp1" intending to use the lp1 queue on the printserver.
Unforunately there was an "interference" with the local lp1. This is what became visible after having removed the remote printer.