Re: [hpoj-devel] Re: ptal-printd init script for RedHat

[<pa...@rc...>]

Daniel Gun wrote:
> It may not detect hot-plugging, but my PSC500 is almost never turned on when
> I start the computer.  I turn it on just before I am about to scan or print.
> So, either Windows polls it at print and/or scan time, or else it has some
> other way to know that the device was turned on.
> 
> In the former case, the answer would be to have hpoj poll the device each
> time it is about to print or scan.
Oh, sorry, I thought you were talking about the "plug-and-play" detection
where it discovers a new peripheral connected and starts installing the
drivers.  Once the drivers are installed, I think they try to initialize
the peripheral the first time you try to use it.  Actually, the hpoj
drivers also reinitialize the printer every time a new connection to the
peripheral is made (when there wasn't already one).  The problem is that
when an attempt is made to load ieee12844pp.o, it queries parport_probe to
find out what peripheral was connected at the time parport_probe was loaded,
and refuses to load in the first place no suitable peripheral was detected.
I think this behavior could be fixed by hacking the init_module function
(which has two different versions depending on the kernel version).  However,
if init_module were made more promiscuous like this then one could run into
problems if there were non-OfficeJet peripherals on other parallel ports.

If all goes well, then I will be able to release a new user-mode I/O driver
soon, which will make this whole issue a moot point anyway.  :-)

David