Bug 1787898 - printing fails with "Unable to locate printer" after Fedora upgrade
Summary: printing fails with "Unable to locate printer" after Fedora upgrade
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED EOL
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: desktop-printing
Version: 31
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Orphan Owner
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2020-01-05 09:58 UTC by skierpage
Modified: 2020-11-24 16:09 UTC (History)
2 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2020-11-24 16:09:10 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)
system-config-printer Troubleshooting output (106.05 KB, text/plain)
2020-01-05 09:58 UTC, skierpage
no flags Details
part of cups log (91.84 KB, text/plain)
2020-01-05 10:00 UTC, skierpage
no flags Details

Description skierpage 2020-01-05 09:58:40 UTC
Created attachment 1649949 [details]
system-config-printer Troubleshooting output

Description of problem:
After upgrading to Fedora 31 beta, printing to a networked Epson printer failed with 'Unable to locate printer "EPSON10AD1E.local".'

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

How reproducible:
Printing didn't work, but I didn't try reverting and repeating the upgrade.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Install Epson's driver for WF-3540 printer.
2. Get printing working
3. ??? time passes, upgrade to Fedora 31.
4. Try printing.

Actual results:
The documents are stuck in the print queue with status 'Unable to locate printer "EPSON10AD1E.local".'


Expected results:
Printing works.

Additional info:

I tried reinstalling the printer from KDE printers dialog, and modifying the printer from the (amazing) CUPS admin interface at localhost:631. Nothing helped. If I set cups debug and capture journal output, everything looks fine until
  cupsd[156258]: [CGI] cgiSetArray: job_printer_state_message[0]="Unable to locate printer "EPSON10AD1E.local"." , which is just reporting the error I see.

The printer shows up in `lpinfo -v` as 
  network dnssd://EPSON%20WF-3540%20Series._ipp._tcp.local/?uuid=7c47f900-67ff-11d4-9a7f-b0e89210ad1e
  network ipp://EPSON10AD1E.local:631/Epson_IPP_Printer
CUPS admin showed it was using the dnssd connection; I switched to the IPP connection but that didn't help.

Comment 1 skierpage 2020-01-05 10:00:07 UTC
Created attachment 1649950 [details]
part of cups log

I had the CUPS web admin page open so I think most output comes from that.

Comment 2 skierpage 2020-01-05 10:47:21 UTC
I found a fix!

https://askubuntu.com/questions/82016/network-printer-found-but-cannot-print/455285#455285 suggests the hosts line in /etc/nsswitch.conf needs to mention mdns, but my file contained only
        hosts:      files dns myhostname

https://fedoramagazine.org/find-systems-easily-lan-mdns/ suggests one way to repair this is to remove then reinstall the nss-mdns package. Instead I did `sudo dnf reinstall nss-mdns` which changed the line in /etc/nsswitch.conf to the recommended
        hosts:      files mdns4_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] dns myhostname

and then printing worked! I did not install avahi-browse to see if my printer was discoverable before making this fix.

RH bug 1577243 discusses how authselect and the nss-mdns package fight over nsswitch.conf , and it sounds like others have had the same problem where an upgrade broke mdns config and thus printing. I have both packages installed; my /etc/nsswitch.conf does not have any mention of authselect and is not a symlink; is is quite different from /etc/authselect/user-nsswitch.conf but both (after I ran `sudo dnf reinstall nss-mdns`) have the identical hosts line with mdns4_minimal. My file sizes and dates are:
 1757 2018-08-23 01:44 /etc/authselect/user-nsswitch.conf
 1702 2020-01-04 20:30 /etc/nsswitch.conf
 1670 2019-09-24 03:30 /etc/nsswitch.conf.bak


Documentation: This issue and workaround is not mentioned on https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_debug_printing_problems (nor does it mention avahi-browse as https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems does).

Comment 3 Ben Cotton 2020-11-03 16:06:32 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 31 is nearing its end of life.
Fedora will stop maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 31 on 2020-11-24.
It is Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no longer
maintained. At that time this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a
Fedora 'version' of '31'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 31 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 4 skierpage 2020-11-03 23:01:40 UTC
I've had more problems printing to my %$#@! Epson WF-3540 printer, but not this specific problem with /etc/nsswitch.conf after upgrading to F32, F33, and F34.

Comment 5 Ben Cotton 2020-11-24 16:09:10 UTC
Fedora 31 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2020-11-24. Fedora 31 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.


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