CUPS on 6.2-RELEASE-p3: USB port busy; will retry in 30 seconds...

[andreas scherrer]

Hello FreeBSD-Questions-people!

I am trying to get a Samsung ML5000a printer to work on my FreeBSD 
6.2-RELEASE-p3 box. The Machine has a EPIA Mini-ITX board which has *no* 
parallel port.

The printer only connects through a parallel port though. So I use a 
cable that should be able to help me connect the parallel port of the 
printer to a usb port on the EIPA Mini-ITX board. The cable (USB-PTR) 
was manufactered by Maxxtro.

I am still in the early stage of setup, meaning that I even cannot print 
the testpage from the CUPS webinterface. I get the "USB port busy; will 
retry in 30 seconds..." message and nothing happens on the printer.

The printer is connected to /dev/unlpt0

crw-rw----  1 root  cups    0,  61 May 26 17:18 /dev/unlpt0

/var/cache/cups is writable by the cups group:

drwxrwxr-x  2 root  cups  512 Apr  3 21:43 cups

I managed to get half a testpage out once (I don't know how/why?!?), so 
I assume the cable would be working in theory.

If I issue 'echo test > /dev/unlpt0' I get

bash: /dev/unlpt0: Device busy

Even if cupsd is not running anymore.

Unfortunately, I could not find a solution that worked for me using 
either Google or the FreeBSD mailinglist archives. There are lots of 
threads describing the same or a very similar problem, but none provided 
a solution for me.

If anybody could give me a hint, I would greately appreciate it. If more 
information is needed, I will of course gladly provide it.


Kind regards
andreas