Panther printing stops working; permissions?

I have an Epson Stylus Color 740 connected to my iMac G4, running
Panther. It's worked fine until recently. Now I can't print.

The iMac is talking to the printer; I can, for instance, print the
nozzle check pattern. But attempting to print anything just shuts
down the print queue. No error message is shown.

This smells to me like a permissions problem. I ran permissions
repair between the time printing worked and the time it didn't, and
the log file says it did change some ownerships and/or permissions in
/etc/cups and /var/spool/cups . That's the only thing I can think of
that might have munged something. Of course I could be completely off
base here.

Any help appreciated.

- Rich Holmes

Rich Holmes<rsholmes+usenet@mailbox.syr.edu> writes:

 > This smells to me like a permissions problem. I ran permissions
 > repair between the time printing worked and the time it didn't, and
 > the log file says it did change some ownerships and/or permissions in
 > /etc/cups and /var/spool/cups .

To give some more information, here's the repair permissions log.
Does anything here look like it might cause printing to stop working?

Started verify/repair permissions on disk disk0s9 Macintosh HD
Determining correct file permissions.
User differs on ./Library/Internet Plug-Ins/flashplayer.xpt, should be 0, owner is 501
Permissions differ on ./Library/Internet Plug-Ins/flashplayer.xpt, should be -rw-rw-r-- , they are -rwxrwxr-x
Owner and group corrected on ./Library/Internet Plug-Ins/flashplayer.xpt
Permissions corrected on ./Library/Internet Plug-Ins/flashplayer.xpt
Permissions differ on ./Library/Printers/EPSON/Preferences, should be drwxrwxr-x , they are drwxrwxrwx
Owner and group corrected on ./Library/Printers/EPSON/Preferences
Permissions corrected on ./Library/Printers/EPSON/Preferences
Group differs on ./private/etc/cups/certs, should be 26, group is 0
Owner and group corrected on ./private/etc/cups/certs
Permissions corrected on ./private/etc/cups/certs
Group differs on ./private/etc/cups/classes.conf, should be 26, group is 0
Owner and group corrected on ./private/etc/cups/classes.conf
Permissions corrected on ./private/etc/cups/classes.conf
Group differs on ./private/etc/cups/cupsd.conf, should be 26, group is 0
Owner and group corrected on ./private/etc/cups/cupsd.conf
Permissions corrected on ./private/etc/cups/cupsd.conf
Group differs on ./private/etc/cups/ppd, should be 26, group is 0
Owner and group corrected on ./private/etc/cups/ppd
Permissions corrected on ./private/etc/cups/ppd
Group differs on ./private/etc/cups/printers.conf, should be 26, group is 0
Owner and group corrected on ./private/etc/cups/printers.conf
Permissions corrected on ./private/etc/cups/printers.conf
Group differs on ./private/etc/cups, should be 26, group is 0
Owner and group corrected on ./private/etc/cups
Permissions corrected on ./private/etc/cups
Group differs on ./private/tmp, should be 0, group is 80
Owner and group corrected on ./private/tmp
Permissions corrected on ./private/tmp
Permissions differ on ./private/var/log/install.log, should be -rw-r--r-- , they are -rw-r-----
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var/log/install.log
Permissions corrected on ./private/var/log/install.log
Permissions differ on ./private/var/log/wtmp, should be -rw-r--r-- , they are -rw-r-----
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var/log/wtmp
Permissions corrected on ./private/var/log/wtmp
Group differs on ./private/var/spool/cups/tmp, should be 26, group is 0
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var/spool/cups/tmp
Permissions corrected on ./private/var/spool/cups/tmp
Group differs on ./private/var/spool/cups, should be 26, group is 0
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var/spool/cups
Permissions corrected on ./private/var/spool/cups
Group differs on ./private/var, should be 0, group is 80
Owner and group corrected on ./private/var
Permissions corrected on ./private/var
Group differs on ./private, should be 0, group is 80
Owner and group corrected on ./private
Permissions corrected on ./private
The privileges have been verified or repaired on the selected volume
Verify/repair finished permissions on disk disk0s9 Macintosh HD<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->