A few months ago I stppped being albe to print on my Brother laser printer.

In today's atteopt I successfuly used qpdfview to show me a pdf file,
and then asked qpdfview to send it to the printer.

After a while.a message appeared at the bottom right of the laptop screen:

System Config Printer
Nor connected?
Printer
'Brother_HL-3170SDW]_
may not be connected.

This is the message I've been getting for the past few months,
A few months ago, when it worked, instead a light on the printer
would start to flash, indicating it was receiving data.
Eventually printed pages would emerge.

Presumably there is now difficulty reaching the networked printer.

The printer itself is able to print test pages when operated from
its own front panel.
It reports its IP number of the LAN as being 192.168.1.4, obtained
by DHCP.

Other devices on the LAN are accessile from my laptop.
Presumably my laptop is now unaware of the printer's IP number,
Although it worked fine a few months ago.

But ping on the laptop can reach the printer:

root@midwinter:~# ping 192.168.1.4
PING 192.168.1.4 (192.168.1.4) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 192.168.1.4: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=32.1 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.4: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=16.3 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.4: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=14.6 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.4: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=16.5 ms
^C
--- 192.168.1.4 ping statistics ---
4 packets transmitted, 4 received, 0% packet loss, time 3005ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 14.556/19.871/32.108/7.105 ms
root@midwinter:~#

So thereis indeed *something* at the IP address the printer
claims belongs to it.

Presumably something has changed.

I use CUPS.
CUPS does appear to be installed(so aptitude informs me),
and it all seemed to work a few months ago..

But now firefox cannot connect at http://localhost:631

Isn't that the normal way to configure printers on CUPS?
Or has something changed?

I'm inclined to suspect that somthing has gone wrong
with CUPS. Of cuorse I could be completely wrong and need
to look elsewhere.

-- hendrik