How to reinstall ALL printer services & functions

[jimmyman]

Okay I've been through the sea of internet help and have botched up my printer services, functions, cups, everything. LOL.

I'm running xubuntu 18.04.4

How do I reinstall EVERYTHING back to default that deals with my printer as if it were a fresh install?

[CelticWarrior]

Reinstall the OS is my suggestion. Then, if you find any problem, better ask about it first.

[TheFu]

I can't say this won't do any harm, but if you have nothing to lose, you can
sudo apt purge cups
then verify that everything under /etc/cups/ is gone. Wipe the directory. There could be some files in your HOME for cups. Delete those too, where ever they are. I'd look in ~/.config/ I didn't find any in my setup, but I barely print and have a fresh install. The printer setup might be shoveled into some gtk DB. I hate when programs do that. gconf ...
Might be worth running sudo apt autoremove too.

Then sudo apt install cups

There might be other packages related to cups. I found about 25 of them. No clue if this will help or not. I've never had that issue the last 20+ yrs.

I've never had a network printer here and won't have any wifi printers. At work, we have lots of network printers, but they all accept jobs only from print queue servers, not desktops. My home printers are USB connected to a central print server. Setting up printers to go through the print server is pretty bonehead. I just point at the print server, choose the IPP protocol and pick the driver from the huge list provided. Its been that way for since 10.04. Prior to that, printers were a hassle.

[VMC]

If you log into the cups admin page, what does it show. Can you manipulate your settings:
http://localhost:631/admin/

[jimmyman]

If you log into the cups admin page, what does it show. Can you manipulate your settings:
http://localhost:631/admin/

It just says page can't be reached.

I can't say this won't do any harm, but if you have nothing to lose, you can
sudo apt purge cups
then verify that everything under /etc/cups/ is gone. Wipe the directory. There could be some files in your HOME for cups. Delete those too, where ever they are. I'd look in ~/.config/ I didn't find any in my setup, but I barely print and have a fresh install. The printer setup might be shoveled into some gtk DB. I hate when programs do that. gconf ...
Might be worth running sudo apt autoremove too.

Then sudo apt install cups

There might be other packages related to cups. I found about 25 of them. No clue if this will help or not. I've never had that issue the last 20+ yrs.

I've never had a network printer here and won't have any wifi printers. At work, we have lots of network printers, but they all accept jobs only from print queue servers, not desktops. My home printers are USB connected to a central print server. Setting up printers to go through the print server is pretty bonehead. I just point at the print server, choose the IPP protocol and pick the driver from the huge list provided. Its been that way for since 10.04. Prior to that, printers were a hassle.

I tried to remove cups and it wasn't found. Then I tried the install and this is what I got.

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package cups is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
  cups-filters-core-drivers cups-daemon cups-filters


E: Package 'cups' has no installation candidate

[VMC]

Could means cups not installed.

[jimmyman]

sudo apt-get install cups
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Package cups is not available, but is referred to by another package.
This may mean that the package is missing, has been obsoleted, or
is only available from another source
However the following packages replace it:
  cups-filters-core-drivers cups-daemon cups-filters


E: Package 'cups' has no installation candidate

[VMC]

status:

systemctl status org.cups.cupsd.service

[jimmyman]

status:

systemctl status org.cups.cupsd.service

Unit org.cups.cupsd.service could not be found.



Very puzzled on this one.

[VMC]

Here's mine now:

$ systemctl status org.cups.cupsd.service
● org.cups.cupsd.service - CUPS Scheduler
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/org.cups.cupsd.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabl>
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2020-05-22 21:03:15 PDT; 15min ago
TriggeredBy: ● org.cups.cupsd.path
             ● org.cups.cupsd.socket
       Docs: man:cupsd(8)
   Main PID: 877 (cupsd)
     Status: "Scheduler is running..."
      Tasks: 1 (limit: 9388)
     Memory: 3.6M
     CGroup: /system.slice/org.cups.cupsd.service
             └─877 /usr/bin/cupsd -l

May 22 21:03:15 vmc-tc885 systemd[1]: Starting CUPS Scheduler...
May 22 21:03:15 vmc-tc885 systemd[1]: Started CUPS Scheduler.

Here's what I needed to do, to get it started:

sudo systemctl enable org.cups.cupsd.service
sudo systemctl start org.cups.cupsd.service