Results of further investigation:

In my original posting, I omitted the detailed listing of @INC because I figured that it would just be the usual directories. That assumption was wrong. For some reason, foomatic-configure was only picking up the directories associated with my Perl 5.8.5 installation located under /usr/local/bin; it was not picking up any directories under my older, RedHat-supplied 5.6.0 installation under /usr/bin. What was perplexing about this was that foomatic-configure was coded with #!/usr/bin/perl -- so if anything, I would have expected it to lack the 5.8.5 directories.

What's further puzzling about this is that when I called locate Defaults.pm, I was directed to a directory where both Foomatic::Defaults and Foomatic::DB could be found!

I dumped the entire content of @INC into a BEGIN in foomatic-configure. This time, printconf-gui ran! (And it didn't seem to matter whether I was working from 5.6.0 or 5.8.5; I tried both.) I proceeded to edit the options for the Epson Stylus Color 740, but when I got to the final tab, "Driver Options," the program failed, throwing the following error message: 

/usr/local/bin/perl: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/pe
+rl5/site_perl/5.6.0/i386-linux/auto/XML/Parser/Expat/Expat.so: undefi
+ned symbol: Perl_safemalloc

[download]

I got the same error (with the exception of the path) working from both 5.6.0 and 5.8.5. The result: The Epson is still not showing up in the Print menu in progams like Mozilla, and I still can't get anything printed.

Warning: Rant follows:

I originally installed this Linux (as a dual boot on a Windows box) solely for the purpose of having a *nix-like environment with which to develop my Perl work. It served that purpose, but it has failed the much more basic task of printing. This has really soured me on spending much more time playing with Linux (such as installing an updated version, as some posters have suggested). After all, at least with my iBook, I get printing along with my *nix development environment.

Jim Keenan

In reply to Re: Where can I find Foomatic::Defaults and Foomatic::DB? by jkeenan1
in thread Where can I find Foomatic::Defaults and Foomatic::DB? by jkeenan1

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