CUPS tripped up SeaMonkey and Firefox

[beregond]

My old printer died some time ago and I intend to get a new one. I figure that will probably mean using CUPS, and as I have never done so before I brought home an old printer from my work to exercise with. It is an HP LaserJet M1120n MFP. I connected it to the same D-link router that my ArcaOS computer is connected to and started CUPS. CUPS found the printer and a driver for it, but I could not get it to print. That is, however, not the immediate problem. The problem is that afterwards, when I try to start SeaMonkey I get the error message "Couldn't load XPCOM", and when I try to start Firefox I get "Couldn't load xul.dll (OS/2 error 87)".
   How do I fix this?

[Dave Yeo]

Usually that error is caused by a missing DLL. If all you did was set up a printer and print, it seems weird.
What version of ArcaOS are you using? Have you kept the packages up to date? Double check popuplog.os2 in the root of your boot drive for failures.
Hopefully someone who uses Cups can chime in.

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi beregond, welcome to the forum !!!

I had tried CUPS under ArcaOS 5.1 here on my Thinkpad T14s, and the included Firefox keeps working here. XUL.DLL is located here in C:\Programs\Firefox and c:\Programs\Thunderbird.  (Firefox version is one day newer and a little bit bigger).

Can you find your XUL.DLL files in your HDD?

Regards

[Pete]

Hi beregond

I have seen this problem in the distant past and think it was basically an out-of-memory error caused by experimenting with cups and generating a large non-printing print queue. I think the only solution is to move cups daemon from the Computer -> Startup folder (move it into Computer) and reboot then check that Seamonkey starts.

If that is successful you will then need to clear the cups print queue.

With Seamonkey running doubleclick cups daemon to start cups.
Point Seamonkey to cups admin gui at http://localhost:631
Click on the Printers tab
Click on your printer
In the Maintenance dropdown box select Cancel All Jobs
In the Administration dropdown box select Modify printer to check the printer settings are correct
Move cups daemon back into the Startup folder

Hope the above is of help

Pete

[beregond]

Many thanks for your answers!

Pete, after reboot with the CUPS daemon removed from the Startup folder, trying to start SeaMonkey still gives the same error.

Martin, yes xul.dll is present:
2020/11/18 01:18:25 43239149 F:\Programs\Thunderbird\xul.dll
2020/11/14 22:59:17 43596339 F:\Programs\SeaMonkey2\xul.dll
2020/11/11 22:08:01 41073853 F:\Programs\Firefox\xul.dll

Dave, my system is ArcaOS 5.0.6 and I confess I have not updated it. Yes, the failures are indeed registered in popuplog.os2; here are the results of the latest attempts to start SeaMonkey and Firefox:

------------------------------------------------------------

02-09-2024  22:43:10  SYS3175  PID 0092  TID 0001  Slot 0086
F:\PROGRAMS\SEAMONKEY2\SEAMONKEY.EXE
c0000005
167507c7
P1=00000001  P2=00000001  P3=XXXXXXXX  P4=XXXXXXXX 
EAX=00000000  EBX=1731887c  ECX=5ad1e9f0  EDX=00000000
ESI=173187e4  EDI=00000000 
DS=0053  DSACC=d0f3  DSLIM=5fffffff 
ES=0053  ESACC=d0f3  ESLIM=5fffffff 
FS=150b  FSACC=00f3  FSLIM=00000030
GS=0000  GSACC=****  GSLIM=********
CS:EIP=005b:5e117d4b  CSACC=d0df  CSLIM=5fffffff
SS:ESP=0053:0013ff64  SSACC=d0f3  SSLIM=5fffffff
EBP=0013ff70  FLG=00010293

PSPRINT.DRV 0002:000107c7

------------------------------------------------------------

02-09-2024  22:43:14  SYS3175  PID 0094  TID 0001  Slot 0086
F:\PROGRAMS\FIREFOX\FIREFOX.EXE
c0000005
167507c7
P1=00000001  P2=00000001  P3=XXXXXXXX  P4=XXXXXXXX 
EAX=00000000  EBX=17315550  ECX=5b08e9f0  EDX=00000000
ESI=173154c0  EDI=00000000 
DS=0053  DSACC=d0f3  DSLIM=5fffffff 
ES=0053  ESACC=d0f3  ESLIM=5fffffff 
FS=150b  FSACC=00f3  FSLIM=00000030
GS=0000  GSACC=****  GSLIM=********
CS:EIP=005b:5e124cbb  CSACC=d0df  CSLIM=5fffffff
SS:ESP=0053:0013ff64  SSACC=d0f3  SSLIM=5fffffff
EBP=0013ff70  FLG=00010293

PSPRINT.DRV 0002:000107c7

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

...Pete, after reboot with the CUPS daemon removed from the Startup folder, trying to start SeaMonkey still gives the same error.

...Yes, the failures are indeed registered in popuplog.os2; here are the results of the latest attempts to start SeaMonkey and Firefox:

------------------------------------------------------------

02-09-2024  22:43:10  SYS3175  PID 0092  TID 0001  Slot 0086
F:\PROGRAMS\SEAMONKEY2\SEAMONKEY.EXE
c0000005
167507c7
P1=00000001  P2=00000001  P3=XXXXXXXX  P4=XXXXXXXX 
EAX=00000000  EBX=1731887c  ECX=5ad1e9f0  EDX=00000000
ESI=173187e4  EDI=00000000 
DS=0053  DSACC=d0f3  DSLIM=5fffffff 
ES=0053  ESACC=d0f3  ESLIM=5fffffff 
FS=150b  FSACC=00f3  FSLIM=00000030
GS=0000  GSACC=****  GSLIM=********
CS:EIP=005b:5e117d4b  CSACC=d0df  CSLIM=5fffffff
SS:ESP=0053:0013ff64  SSACC=d0f3  SSLIM=5fffffff
EBP=0013ff70  FLG=00010293

PSPRINT.DRV 0002:000107c7

------------------------------------------------------------

Aha...I think I know the root cause here, or at least a worthy attempt to fix this.

I have encountered this before while attempting to remove a FXPrint printer setup.

It would seem the application stores the printer selection from the last time you used that printer. However, if that printer is now no longer defined/present, the application may not gracefully handle that and it may subsequently crash.

This was some time ago, but I think I ultimately editted either the app INI settings, or the OS2.INI file for this specific application. By "editted" I mean I removed the reference to that printer which no longer existed on my system.

So in your case, given that Seamonkey is the culprit, check the appropriate entries that might reference the printer.

...in the meantime I'll scratch my head a little more to remember the specific of what I had encountered...

[Dave Yeo]

Hi beregond, Dariusz may be on to something, directly editing the ini files to remove a printer driver is not for the inexperienced or even most experienced. There is a program floating around that will remove printer drivers whose name escapes me right now. I haven't had a printer in years.
Hopefully Alex or perhaps Rich may show up with some other ideas along this line.
For now, lets see if we can fix Firefox/SeaMonkey ((FF or SM).
Have you tried starting FF or SM in safe mode? If not, go to Programs-->Installed Software-->Firefox/SeaMonkey (the procedure is the same for both, we'll use FF) and click on the Firefox Safe Mode icon. Hopefully Firefox comes up. Press CTRL-P and in the printing dialog box, change your printer to no printer or IBMNULL, close the browser and retry. If it works, repeat with SeaMonkey.
If it doesn't work, report how far along you got, we may have to edit your prefs.js file.
Of course the simplest is if you have a backup from before you played with printing, if so if so, let me know and I'll explain how to replace prefs.js
BTW, if you don't care about your Firefox profile, you can refresh it. Not recommended unless you don't mind losing all your bookmarks, settings and history.

[Pete]

Hi beregond

The program Dave Yeo is referring to is probably prndrv.exe which can be found here  https://www.os2site.com/sw/comm/fax/prndrv.zip

Enter prndrv on the command line to get a list of options.


Regards

Pete

[Dariusz Piatkowski]

...Press CTRL-P and in the printing dialog box, change your printer to no printer or IBMNULL, close the browser and retry. If it works, repeat with SeaMonkey.
If it doesn't work, report how far along you got, we may have to edit your prefs.js file.
Of course the simplest is if you have a backup from before you played with printing, if so if so, let me know and I'll explain how to replace prefs.js

Dave's right on the money here if you can start the application in safe mode.

I believe the actual config preference that points to the ACTIVE printer (basically the last selected one) is "print_printer", so if the applications are unusable it may be necessary to look for that in prefs.js and adjust it there accordingly.

In my case, here is what that looks like in prefs.js:

Code: [Select]

user_pref("print_printer", "PSPRINT.Brother HL-5470DW");

You will see other printers listed in your prefs.js, you could simply pick a value that represents such a valid printer and put that into the "print_printer".

For example, the above printer is actually defined as:

Code: [Select]

user_pref("print.printer_PSPRINT.Brother HL-5470DW.printer_description", "Brother HL-5470DW BR-Script3 OS (PSPRINT)");

If that does not work, it may be possible to just set that to a NULL value, perhaps just "", but I haven't tried that.

[roberto]

It could be a problem, that you removed the driver from the old printer.
And it's still in the trash. I would advise you to empty the trash, reboot,
and install the new printer.
 I understand that this can happen to you because you are a 506 version
Saludos

[beregond]

Prndrv.exe solved it! Thanks for all the help!

I will experiment again with CUPS -- if I have new problems, will "Utilities" be the proper heading to post under?