[KLUG Members] gnumeric problem

[Adam Williams]

>>I think I missed something?  Does your printer not print at all?  Can you print
>>text (lpr /etc/group)?  Do you still have font problems in gnumeric?
>Not at all.  Directing output to lpr gives on error messages.  Gnumeric,

So if you do "man -t ls | lpr"  what message do you get?
What does "/usr/sbin/checkpc" report?
Is "lpd" running?

I assume gnome-print is installed?  gnumeric uses gnome-print to
enumerate fonts,  it might be worth doing a force re-install of that
package.

>is now working but without the usual fonts (Courier, Times
>New Roman, Helvetica,...) even though other programs using fonts such as
>AbiWord have all the normal fonts.

Abiword's handling of fonts is "bizarre".  Use "xlsfonts" on the command
line to see what fonts are available to the X server.  "gfontsel" lets
you browse the available fonts.

This wacky each-to-his-own font management is one of the UN*X problems.
 
>At this point, I'm thinking of rebuilding the kernel from scratch, not
>accepting the packages and features installed in my old 6.2. That may take
>care of booting showing a new hardware item: a USB port - interesting

The USB port thing is interesting,  but I think a red herring.  That is
probably too many levels down to generate an error in producing output
from gnumeric.  Gnumeric should still produce the print job and pass it
to lpd,  and if the hardware level is munged you'd see the print job
sitting there with "lpq"

>since I have an ancient system and take care of ifconfig showing no lo, as
>well as the printing and gnumeric problems.

No lo?!  That should break lots of things.

Does /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-lo exists?
If not create it with the following content -

DEVICE=lo
IPADDR=127.0.0.1
NETMASK=255.0.0.0
NETWORK=127.0.0.0
# If you're having problems with gated making 127.0.0.0/8 a martian,
# you can change this to something else (255.255.255.255, for example)
BROADCAST=127.255.255.255
ONBOOT=yes
NAME=loopback

Then do "/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup lo" and see what happens. 
Networking is enabled for your run level?  Do you have any other network
interfaces up?  Does NETWORKING=yes in /etc/sysconfig/network?

>Looking forward to further sage advice.  

I only provide rosemary advice. :)

>Should I switch this to the novice group?

I don't think so,  this is plenty convoluted enough to be a "real"
problem.