I have exactly the same error message with a parallel port printer (epson stylus
color 800). Now, on my rawhide linux box, I got to the point where princonf-gui
crashes (bug 57515) and printconf-tui crashes... How am I supposed to configure
the printer??

Does the printconf currently in rawhide help any?

The following upgrades fixed the problem for printconf-tui:

perl-5.6.1-21
perl-XML-Parser-2.30-10

whatever the printconf version be (0.3.58-1 and 0.3.62-1).

Okay, thanks.

Umh, NO BANNANAS !

# date
Mon Jan 28 11:02:34 CET 2002

# setup
Initializing alchemist edit environment ...
Initializing linux printing database ...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/sbin/printconf-tui", line 8, in ?
    printconf_tui.startup_and_find_cmd()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 2059, in
startup_and_find_cmd
    main.cmd_handlers[cmd]()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 1938, in tui_main_run
    qld_run()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 1811, in qld_run
    if nqd_run():
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 153, in nqd_run
    nqd_finish()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 260, in nqd_finish
    construct_queue(nqd.queue_type_space, nqd.data, nqd.driver_tuple)
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_conf.py", line 815, in construct_queue
    filter_data["printer_id"] = printer.id
SystemError: error return without exception set

It's _the_ _latest_ rawhide mirror !

# rpm -qa | grep print
gnome-print-0.34.90-1
printconf-gui-0.3.62-1
printconf-0.3.62-1
libgnomeprint15-0.34.90-1

# rpm -qa | grep perl 
groff-perl-1.17.2-9
perl-libxml-enno-1.02-8
perl-5.6.1-22
perl-XML-Encoding-1.01-4
perl-DateManip-5.40-10
perl-HTML-Parser-3.25-5
perl-URI-1.17-10
perl-CGI-2.752-22
perl-XML-Parser-2.30-10
perl-XML-Dumper-0.4-7
perl-CPAN-1.59_54-22
perl-DB_File-1.75-22
perl-MIME-Base64-2.12-9
perl-Storable-1.0.14-10
perl-libxml-perl-0.07-9
perl-XML-Grove-0.46alpha-6
perl-HTML-Tagset-3.03-9
perl-SGMLSpm-1.03ii-5
perl-libwww-perl-5.62-9
perl-XML-Twig-2.02-4
perl-Digest-MD5-2.16-10
perl-Parse-Yapp-1.05-10

# rpm -qa | grep Py  
PyXML-0.7-3

Printer setup is HP4050TN as jetdirect with postscript driver.
If I _copy_ /etc/printcap from RH7.2 install (same printer data)
LPRng works just fine.

So _what_ to do next ?

Alright.  Please tell me exactly what buttons you press, and in which order.

Thanks.

Ok, here it goes ->

# setup    (printconf-tui does the same)

Printer configuration

New

Queue Name:hp
Jetdirect Printer                   JETDIRECT
Next

Ip    195.29.xxx.xxx
Port  9100
Next

<-> HP
   <-> Color LaserJet 4550
          Postscript
Next


 About to create the following queue:
xx                     Type: Jetdirect Printer
xx                       IP: 195.29.xxx.xxx
xx                     Port: 9100
xx                   Driver: HP Color LaserJet 4550 Postscript                   

Finish
**KABOOM**

The _same_ happens with Lexmark Optra Color 1275 Postscript
as driver.

What does 'rpm -qV foomatic' say?

# rpm -qV foomatic
foomatic-1.1-1.20011018.7

Oh, nooo, just noticed that dreaded rpm bug again (-1.$DATE vs -0.$DATE).
Argh, upgrading with --force ..

# rpm -Uvh --force foomatic-1.1-0.20020124.2.i386.rpm 
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:foomatic               ########################################### [100%]

# rpm -qV foomatic                                   
foomatic-1.1-0.20020124.2

testing printer setup again ..
argh, even worse ->

# printconf-tui 
Initializing alchemist edit environment ...
Initializing linux printing database ...
sh: /var/cache/foomatic/compiled/overview.xml: No such file or directory
cat: /var/cache/foomatic/compiled/overview.xml: No such file or directory
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/sbin/printconf-tui", line 8, in ?
    printconf_tui.startup_and_find_cmd()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 2059, in
startup_and_find_cmd
    main.cmd_handlers[cmd]()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 1927, in tui_main_run
    foomatic_init_overview()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_conf.py", line 1281, in
foomatic_init_overview
    root = parser.parse(foo.fromchild)
  File
"/usr/src/build/65732-i386/install/usr/lib/python2.2/site-packages/_xmlplus/utils/qp_xml.py",
line 134, in parse
xml.parsers.expat.ExpatError: no element found: line 1, column 0

Do you have a /var/cache/foomatic/compiled directory?  If not, make one.

Nope, here it goes ->

# l /var/cache/foomatic 
total 8
drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root         4096 Sij 26 18:01 .
drwxr-xr-x    7 root     root         4096 Sij 23 14:10 ..
# mkdir /var/cache/foomatic/compiled
# printconf-tui
Initializing alchemist edit environment ...
Initializing linux printing database ...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/sbin/printconf-tui", line 8, in ?
    printconf_tui.startup_and_find_cmd()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 2059, in
startup_and_find_cmd
    main.cmd_handlers[cmd]()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 1938, in tui_main_run
    qld_run()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 1811, in qld_run
    if nqd_run():
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 153, in nqd_run
    nqd_finish()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 260, in nqd_finish
    construct_queue(nqd.queue_type_space, nqd.data, nqd.driver_tuple)
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_conf.py", line 815, in construct_queue
    filter_data["printer_id"] = printer.id
SystemError: error return without exception set


hum, I'm doomed ..

Run 'printconf-backend --force-rebuild'.

Still no go ->

# printconf-backend --force-rebuild
# printconf-tui                    
Initializing alchemist edit environment ...
Initializing linux printing database ...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/sbin/printconf-tui", line 8, in ?
    printconf_tui.startup_and_find_cmd()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 2059, in
startup_and_find_cmd
    main.cmd_handlers[cmd]()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 1938, in tui_main_run
    qld_run()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 1811, in qld_run
    if nqd_run():
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 153, in nqd_run
    nqd_finish()
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_tui.py", line 260, in nqd_finish
    construct_queue(nqd.queue_type_space, nqd.data, nqd.driver_tuple)
  File "/usr/share/printconf/util/printconf_conf.py", line 815, in construct_queue
    filter_data["printer_id"] = printer.id
SystemError: error return without exception set

Possibly a python2.2 thing.  I'll look at it again when anaconda can build rawhide
installations.

Oh, wait, I see what it is.  Alchemist doesn't handle python unicode types.

Test case:

# cd /usr/share/printconf/util
# python
>>> from printconf_conf import *
>>> editor = SubspaceEditor("printconf")
>>> dict = editor.editReadBox("local")
>>> ctx = dict["dynamic_context"]
>>> queue = ctx.data["/printconf/print_queues"].addData(AdmListType, "queuename")
>>> queue.atomic = 1
>>> filter_data = queue.addData(AdmListType, "filter_data")
>>> filter_data["printer_id"] = u"1"

# cd /usr/share/printconf/util
# python
Python 2.2 (#1, Jan 25 2002, 13:13:10) 
[GCC 3.1 20020115 (Red Hat Linux Rawhide 3.1-0.18)] on linux2
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> from printconf_conf import *
>>> editor = SubspaceEditor("printconf")
>>> dict = editor.editReadBox("local")
>>> ctx = dict["dynamic_context"]
>>> queue = ctx.data["/printconf/print_queues"].addData(AdmListType, "queuename")
>>> queue.atomic = 1
>>> filter_data = queue.addData(AdmListType, "filter_data")
>>> filter_data["printer_id"] = u"1"
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in ?
SystemError: error return without exception set
>>> 

There are 2 problems here.

1: in alchemist/src/pyalchemist.c
pyAdmList_mp_setitem needs to set error codes properly before returning -1 on
all errors.

2: in general, and in the same function:
The alchemist does not use the PyUnicode class anywhere, at all. This is not my
bug, really, as the class did not exist in python 1. However, every place where
a PyString is checked for and used in the pyalchemist code, there needs to be
parallel code to check for PyUnicode as well. This will not be fun.

This is worked around in printconf now.