foomatic-gui: Unable to read printer database.

[rfried]

Binary package hint: foomatic-gui

Printing works but foomatic-gui found in Anwendungen -> Systemwerkzeuge -> Printers does nothing

looing thins up in terminal i got the "Unable to read printer database." Error.
What i did afterwards is to install package foomatic-db-gutenprint but Error does not go away ...

$ sudo foomatic-gui
Unable to read printer database.

$ sudo foomatic-configure -Q
<queues>
<defaultqueue>epson</defaultqueue>
<queue foomatic="0" spooler="cups">
  <name>epson</name>
  <connect>usb://EPSON/Stylus%20Photo%20RX420</connect>
  <location>titan usb port</location>
  <description>Epson Stylus Photo RX420</description>
  <dontdisable>0</dontdisable>
  <attempts>1</attempts>
  <delay>30</delay>
  <quotaperiod>0</quotaperiod>
  <pagelimit>0</pagelimit>
  <klimit>0</klimit>
  <laststatechange>1179569056</laststatechange>
  <shared>Yes</shared>
  <operationpolicy>default</operationpolicy>
  <errorpolicy>retry-job</errorpolicy>
</queue>
</queues>

$ dpkg -l | grep foomatic
ii foomatic-db 20070327-0ubuntu1 OpenPrinting printer support - database
ii foomatic-db-engine 3.0.2-20070303-0ubuntu1 OpenPrinting printer support - programs
ii foomatic-db-gutenprint 5.0.0.99.1-0ubuntu2 OpenPrinting printer support - database for
ii foomatic-db-hpijs 20070327-0ubuntu1 OpenPrinting printer support - database for
ii foomatic-filters 3.0.2-20070323-0ubuntu1 OpenPrinting printer support - filters
ii foomatic-gui 0.7.6 GNOME interface for configuring the Foomatic
ii python-foomatic 0.7.6 Python interface to the Foomatic printer dat

King Regards, Roland

[rfried (rfried)]

ssia

[U Das (nxb76z7f001)]

I hit the same issue. Would it help to collect the same outputs?

[Pascal De Vuyst (pascal-devuyst)]

rfried and U Das,
This should not be a problem anymore on a fresh installation of Feisty. Did you do a dist-upgrade from Edgy?

Does it work after running the following command from a terminal:
$ sudo foomatic-cleanupdrivers

[rfried (rfried)]

Dear Pascal,

Thank you very much for looking into it!

1. I did a fresh install of Feisty at 2007-05-08

2. cleanup drivers has no effect on my installation:

rfried@titan:~$ type -a foomatic-cleanupdrivers
foomatic-cleanupdrivers is /usr/sbin/foomatic-cleanupdrivers
rfried@titan:~$ sudo foomatic-cleanupdrivers
rfried@titan:~$ sudo foomatic-gui
Unable to read printer database.
rfried@titan:~$ sudo foomatic-configure -Q
<queues>
<defaultqueue>epson</defaultqueue>
<queue foomatic="0" spooler="cups">
  <name>epson</name>
  <connect>usb://EPSON/Stylus%20Photo%20RX420</connect>
  <location>titan usb port</location>
  <description>Epson Stylus Photo RX420</description>
  <dontdisable>0</dontdisable>
  <attempts>1</attempts>
  <delay>30</delay>
  <quotaperiod>0</quotaperiod>
  <pagelimit>0</pagelimit>
  <klimit>0</klimit>
  <laststatechange>1187289275</laststatechange>
  <shared>Yes</shared>
  <operationpolicy>default</operationpolicy>
  <errorpolicy>retry-job</errorpolicy>
</queue>
<queue foomatic="0" spooler="cups">
  <name>FaxPrinter</name>
  <connect>socket://localhost:9900</connect>
  <description>FaxPrinter</description>
  <dontdisable>0</dontdisable>
  <attempts>1</attempts>
  <delay>30</delay>
  <quotaperiod>0</quotaperiod>
  <pagelimit>0</pagelimit>
  <klimit>0</klimit>
  <laststatechange>1181475411</laststatechange>
  <shared>Yes</shared>
  <operationpolicy>default</operationpolicy>
  <errorpolicy>retry-job</errorpolicy>
</queue>
</queues>
rfried@titan:~$

Kind Regards,
Roland

[Patrice Vetsel (vetsel-patrice)]

I confirm this bug in Gutsy.

kagou@satori:~$ foomatic-g
foomatic-getpjloptions foomatic-gswrapper foomatic-gui
kagou@satori:~$ foomatic-gui
Unable to read printer database.
kagou@satori:~$ dpkg -l | grep foomatic
ii foomatic-db 20070813-0ubuntu1 OpenPrinting printer support - database
ii foomatic-db-engine 3.0.2-20070719-0ubuntu1 OpenPrinting printer support - programs
ii foomatic-db-hpijs 20070813-0ubuntu1 OpenPrinting printer support - database for
ii foomatic-filters 3.0.2-20070719-0ubuntu1 OpenPrinting printer support - filters
ii foomatic-gui 0.7.7 GNOME interface for configuring the Foomatic
ii python-foomatic 0.7.7 Python interface to the Foomatic printer dat
kagou@satori:~$

[Colin Alston (colina)]

I can confirm this bug happens on Feisty as well.

It's unfortunately the only way we seem to be able to add printers at all in Ubuntu (where it works!) so I think the importance should be raised. "Low" seems a little trite for a bug that makes a package totally broken

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

The standard printer setup tool on Gutsy is system-config-printer and on Feisty is gnome-cups-manager. So printer setup is still possible under Ubuntu even without foomatic-gui. Therefore it is set to "Low" priority.

I do not know whether the tool is still maintained upstream.

[Mantas Kriaučiūnas (mantas)]

Till Kamppeter wrote on 2007-08-29:
> The standard printer setup tool on Gutsy is system-config-printer.
> So printer setup is still possible under Ubuntu even without foomatic-gui.
> Therefore it is set to "Low" priority.

I thought, that "Importance" field in bugreport tells, how important is bug for usage of package, not for usage of ubuntu. For example there is crash bug in epiphany-browser - bug #96267 and importance is set to Medium.
Why it's set to medium - browsing is still possible under Ubuntu even without epiphany-browser as mozilla firefox is always installed.
Till, I think you are not right - foomatic-gui doesn't work, it doesn't even start in Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy), so, importance of this bug should be set to High or foomatic-gui package should be removed from Ubuntu.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Do you know whether foomatic-gui is still maintained upstream (it was Chris Lawrence from Debian who did it)? If not, we should drop it.

[rusivi2 (rusivi2-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The version of Ubuntu your reporting with is in End of Life status. For more on this please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases This issue is one that should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD of the development release - Maverick Meerkat. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed in the next release of Ubuntu. You can find out more about the development release at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ . Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

[jhansonxi (jhansonxi)]

Bug is still present in Ubuntu 12.04 (Precise Pangolin). The package requires foomatic-db but it is not included as a dependency.
foomatic-gui 0.7.9.5build1

[Woonjas (woonjas)]

On 12.04, same issue and when I try to install foomatic-db using synaptic, it tells me ubuntu-desktp will be removed, so I'm not sure if I want to go ahead with that