Problem with CUPS and Samba on Ubuntu 9.04 ( Jaunty Jalope )

Had an interesting problem with my 10 year old HP PSC500 printer, whilst trying to print a PDF file from Document Viewer.

Not having been aware of changing anything since this last worked, I was assuming that my Ubuntu box's configuration hadn't changed drastically, and I'd already checked the power and parallel ( old skool ) printer cables.

The error message that kept popping up was: -

"Failed To Print Document, Too Many Failed Attempts"

which wasn't particularly meaningful.

I started and stopped the printer via the CUPS web UI at: -

http://localhost:631/printers/

but to no avail.

I'd also tried starting and stopping CUPS, via the shell commands: -

sudo service cups restart

When I checked the CUPS error log /var/logs/cups/error.log, I saw the following errors, which appeared relevant: -


E [31/Dec/2009:13:56:27 +0000] cupsdReadClient: 17 IPP Read Error!

E [31/Dec/2009:13:58:13 +0000] cupsdReadClient: 17 IPP Read Error!

E [31/Dec/2009:14:00:01 +0000] cupsdReadClient: 17 IPP Read Error!

 A quick Google search suggested that the problem might be with Samba (!) rather than CUPS, even though I'm printing directly from the application on the PC to which the printer is connected.

Be that as it may, I tried restarting Samba: -

sudo service samba restart

and tried to reprint the offending document.

Lo and behold, the printer started printing and we're back in the game ....

Weird but true ...