When using multiple USB printers, the numbering of them can be fairly random. It's much more useful to have a udev rule to create a symlink. For example, I've created a file in /etc/udev/rules.d/ which contains this: BUS=="usb", SYSFS{serial}=="00CNC2473891", SYMLINK="usb/lp_laserjet" BUS=="usb", SYSFS{serial}=="ABCDE0311051619530", SYMLINK="usb/lp_epson" ... and then configured cups to use the symlinks instead of the numbered /dev/usb/lp[01] devices. It would be useful if system-config-printer could set up stable symlinks for itself this way.
I still get another laserjet queue automatically added when I connect the device, and a warning about not recognising the Epson: No match for USB device: mfr "EPSON" model "Stylus Photo 830U" desc "EPSON Stylus Photo 830U" cmdset "ESCPL2,BDC,D4" I responded to the warning about the Epson, and now it's created a print queue for me with a device URL along the lines of hal:///org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_.... I configured that queue as I desire it, and all seems to be well. However, the same doesn't work for the laserjet. Well, it _does_, but the print queue then disappears when the usblp.ko module is unloaded. And when the usblp.ko module is loaded again all the configuration changes I made are lost -- a completely new print queue is created instead. The Epson queue is still fine though. What I've done now is load the module, then run system-config-printer and configured the queues as I desire them. Then I unloaded usblp.ko and clicked 'Apply' to save my changes. Now, when I load the usblp.ko module I get a _second_ laserjet queue which is unconfigured, but my real laserjet and epson queues are still OK. So hotplugging is sort of working as long as I don't care about the cosmetics. Is this what the normal user is expected to do? All I wanted was to set the print queue name and to make sure it's shared.
Oh, maybe more than the name and the sharing... I also need to set my Epson Stylus Colour 830U to Ink Type 'Four Color Standard' if I want grey to actually come out grey; otherwise it looks like http://david.woodhou.se/testpage.jpeg That seems a little strange to me -- I'm sure it's a 5-colour cartridge (and separate black).
This is essentially the same as bug #81164. CUPS can use serial numbers to distinguish USB printers from one another, and in fact left to its own devices (heh) it will. I need to make system-config-printer understand that. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 81164 ***