Ubuntu – Printing service not available

14.04cups-lpdgnomeprinting

Sorry if this question looks familiar: I tried solutions proposed by google searches but they either are not working or are too technical for me.

I messed with cups a few days ago, I don't recall exactly how and why but I ended up deleting some cups files.

I have un-installed and re-installed cups several time, through the software center and using the terminal and I also reinstalled cups-daemon but nothing changes.

Now, my local printer won't work. I get the message "printing service not available. Start service on this computer or connect to another server". The "start service" button is "greyd out"
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I tried to restart the service through the terminal with 

sudo service cups restart

to which the shell replies:

cups stop/waiting

and then nothing happens, as if the shell was "waiting" for something the happen. I have to do ctrl-c to get the prompt back.

I tried the troubleshoot instructions in the help menu and it says that "The CUPS print spooler does not seem to be running. To correct this, choose "System->Administration->Services from the main menu and look for the "cups" service"

I do not know where is this "System->Administration->Services" is in Ubuntu 14.04 lts

I also tried:

sudo /etc/init.d/cups start

which yielded

cupsd: Child exited with status 1

Best Answer

I had a similar problem (lubuntu 16.04) with 'printing services being unavailable'. This condition prevented the system from listing the local USB printer for selection. This was overcome installing CUPS:

sudo apt-get install cups

Next bounce the service:

sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart

Finally, restart the machine.

I did not need to install CUPS on my instance of Ubuntu 16.04.

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