Parallel port no longer accessible even though no changes to system.
- by marcusw
I have an old Dell Dimension 8200 running Gentoo which I use solely to control various things using the parallel port. After shutting it down a few weeks ago, I started it up again today and tried to access the parallel port like I usually do. Unfortunately, my code bombed out when it tried to call ioperm(888,1,1) to grab the parallel port which returned an error code of -1. There have been no changes to the system be it hardware or software, no updates, no tweaking, no dropping the case, no over-amping the data pins, nothing. The port and the software have been working fine for months with no changes, and were working fine when I shut it down last. Running my code with root privileges changes nothing. What is breaking this and how can I fix it?