Re: [hpoj-devel] Is ANYBODY there? (was: i/o error)

[t t. <gam...@gm...>]

On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 20:45:39 -0500 (EST), James B. Hiller
<jh...@vi...> wrote:
> said, I'm intuitively certain that the problems you're having have nothing
> to do with hpoj.  Here is my evidence:

Thanks for replying.

I wouldn't normally use up this much bandwidth, but actually your
intuition seems to be incorrect in this case:

> a.  Historically, printing (anything, on anything) is one of the hardest
> things for most people to set up correctly under linux.

My issue is with the ADF, not printing.

(Even though the black ink ran out when an undocumented feature of
ptal-pml says that the black level is 50%, that is.)

CUPS was easy to set up.  Surprisingly pleasant, actually.

My issue, which again is about the ADF, is documented in
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=272304 and
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=283018 .

> c.  I have had a 7130 since March.  Every function on it that hpoj IS
> intended to support works just fine (and those functionalities that

Glad it works for you.  My 6110 does not work for me.  We can trade,
if you want.  :-)

> f.  Believe you'd said that your 6110 once was working, and then
> wasn't; and that you'd gone through about 3 Debian versions since
> then.

Correct about the stopped working.  Incorrect about the versions.  I
don't know where you got the number 3 from.  After a few weeks (I will
have to look at the receipt and my notes and logs), the scanner
stopped working.  I did not change any Debian versions.  I stayed with
Sarge for the entire time.  I did not change kernels.  I did not
reinstall.  I did not add hardware.

What I DID do is normal apt-get upgrade of Sarge packages, in which,
if there is a new version of hpoj or libusb* or sane or anything else
relevant, something might possibly have changed.  Note: *possibly*; we
don't know the cause of the problem yet, because nobody has been able
to look at all of the debugging output yet.

> As above, I'm sorry (truly) that I just haven't had the time to help
> you set up your configuration.  But I'm certain that that's where
> the issue lies.  [...]

What in the debugging output makes you certain of this?  I'm not
saying you're wrong -- might be some SMP thing I have to do that was
too obscure to figure out from the documentation (I know about the
printer.c thing) and not handled properly by Debian's scripts -- but
I'm wondering what error message or scanner behavior led you to be
certain?  That way I can try tweaking whatever you think is relevant. 
(Assuming you have time to explain your reasoning, it would be
helpful.)

> just work, one will surely be disappointed.  (This is a big reason
> why I never mess with distributions - just get stuff, understand what
> it does, build it myself, set it the way I want it, and go).

Never mess with distributions?  You mean you get the kernel and
utilities and applications all separately and create your own
filesystem structure?  WOW!  You're way more macho than me.  :-) 
Again, WOW!  May I say it again?  WOW!  :-)

Me, I'm a serious wimp.  I just get Debian and run apt-get, and answer
the configuration questions it asks me, and if something doesn't work
then poke around as best as possible in the documentation or scripts. 
But I got as far as I could with this one and can't go any farther
without somebody more knowledgable (again WOW!  :-)) than myself
reading the debugging output and helping me figure out what the
problem is.  Granted, I should know more, and I am trying to, but I
got as far as I could.

FWIW the Debian hpoj maintainer says that it seems to be an hpoj
problem rather than a Debian problem or a hardware problem.  And the
Debian Sane maintainer says that it's an hpoj problem rather than a
Sane problem.  For all I know, it's sunspots corrupting the USB cable.

(Hmm, maybe you mean you mean that you do cd /usr/local/...; tar -xvf;
./Configure.  IMHO that's what apt-get does, except that it does it
for me and it puts things in the right places so I don't have to
figure out where the right places are.  I could try to do that all
myself, but I doubt that I would do a better job than the Debian
maintainer who has been following the technical issues and knows what
"usbdevfs", "usbfs", "devfs", or "udev" might or might not have to do
with the devices.)

> With linux, you get visibility and flexibility, as a trade to "everything
> works out of the box."  The community is trying hard to provide "out of the
> box", but there are extremes that can't (and probably shouldn't) be
> reconciled.

Agreed.

> NOTE:  I just put XP on my wife's machine, and I can't get a serial mouse
> to work.  How lame is that?

What, you singlehandedly maintain your own distribution and you can't
get a mouse to work?  :-)  Well, I know what you mean.  I find Linux
easier also.

> Also, like I said earlier - I don't think your original post ever made it
> to the list (and you said as much in later email to me off-list), so you got
> a long lag in getting an answer, since no one saw it back then.

Hmm, I don't recall saying that in email off-list.  On-list, I recall
saying that I posted via gmane then and got various indications that
it did post, including the actual post to gmane, believe it or not. 
Don't know why it would post to gmane but not the list.

Thanks for replying.

And please sometime share your distribution with us wimps.  Maybe it
will be better than Debian.  :-)