Installing printer. localhost:631 not working. Yast2 printer module keeps freezing

[smolloy]

I'm trying to install my new printer -- a brother HL-2070N -- but I'm running into a couple of dumb problems.

1/ http://localhost:631/ doesn't work. I checked that I have the following line in /etc/hosts

smolloy@linux:~> grep -i localhost /etc/hosts
127.0.0.1       localhost

I can also ping localhost.
Cups should be listening on port 631, and I confirmed this as follows,

linux:~ # lsof -i tcp:631
COMMAND  PID USER   FD   TYPE DEVICE SIZE NODE NAME
cupsd   3902   lp    0r  IPv4  11974       TCP *:ipp (LISTEN)

When I use konqueror to go to localhost:631 I get an error message,

An error occurred while loading http://localhost:631/:
Connection to host localhost is broken.

Can anyone help me solve this so I can configure my printer?

2/ yast2 printer configuration stalls every time I try to use it to configure a new printer. It starts by going through a series of steps -- Check environment, read firewall settings, check database of printers, load current settings, detect printers -- but it never gets past "load current settings". While it is stuck here, "top" shows that y2base and cupsd are taking up a huge percentage of the CPU.
I've tried to fix this by reinstalling cups, and a whole raft of other programs, but with no success

Can anyone advise me on this problem? Perhaps it's related to the first problem?

[smolloy]

UPDATE: Without setting anything up, I tried clicking on "print" in the "file" menu of firefox, and firefox completely locked up. There is something very broken with the printing on this computer.

Help please!!!

[smolloy]

OK, cups is definitely hosed. The problem with the yast2 printer configuration freezing is solved by stopping cupsd. Same goes for the "control centre" printer configuration screen. But, of course, that doesn't help me too much cause I need cups to be running to print stuff!

I have no idea what to search for (apart from "cups not working" which doesn't seem very helpful). Any clues -- even just some suggestions for search terms -- would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[smolloy]

SOLVED!!

MOST STUPID SOLUTION EVER.

Any attempt to connect to the printer server was being denied by my /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny. I hadn't set it up to allow 127.0.0.1 access (I didn't think I had to), so any requests from the local machine were being denied, and I only found this out when I examined the cups error log.



PS: Sorry for the "train of thought" style of this thread