Arch Linux

zoqaeski

Member

From: /earth/australia/.

Registered: 2009-09-30

Posts: 132

Printing errors, apparent jamming

I don't know what may have triggered it, but I'm getting strange output when I print. No errors are reported by CUPS or the application, but the printed output gives the impression that the printer is jamming, even though it's not. Normally, the first page prints fine; second and subsequent pages print the same inch or so multiple times down the page; it occurs mainly with PDFs. We've got a couple of printers my computer has access to, both HPs, a Deskjet F4105 on USB, and a networked Photosmart D7460, and the error occurs on each.

Strangely enough, printing each page individually doesn't result in the "jamming".

Has anyone else encountered weirdness like this? I'm at a loss for a proper solution; printing individual pages is a nuisance but not excessively so as most things I print are only two or so pages. But printing a long letter or document will be a real PITA.

a_neutrino

Member

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2010-03-14

Posts: 50

Website

Re: Printing errors, apparent jamming

Hi,

Any errors in /etc/cups/error_log? If you don't see anything, try boosting verbosity of LogLevel to debug in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf (and restart CUPS for it to take effect).

IF your printer is not a postscript capable printer :
Do you have the latest version of ghostscript?
What if you print the document "to a file" (the output is a postscript document) and then process it with ghostscript like this:

gs -q -dBATCH -dSAFER -dQUIET -dNOPAUSE -sPAPERSIZE=letter -r1200x600 -sDEVICE=pbmraw -sOutputFile=test_%d.pbmraw test.ps

Does the resulting pbm images look good in GIMP? (it should be stretched horizontally because of the 1200x600). You can change the resolution in the command to match that of your printer. If these look good, the problem is probably in your filter translating pbmraw into your printer language (aka the driver).

zoqaeski

Member

From: /earth/australia/.

Registered: 2009-09-30

Posts: 132

Re: Printing errors, apparent jamming

Sorry for BUMPing this but I got carried away with other work but still can't fix it.

@a_neutrino: I tried using Ghostscript to render the documents as you suggested, and I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be looking for. I only get a single page of output, and that looks fine: it's the first page.

The problem occurs with multi-page printing: the second and subsequent pages of any printed document jams, and it gets progressively worse. And it doesn't matter whether I tell the printer to print individual pages or what. If I tell it to print pages 2,5,7 then page 2 will work but five will be jammed. It's a software bug; I've glanced over the logs with debug enabled but I have no idea what I'm looking for.

This is getting unbearably annoying, I've tried reinstalling CUPS and associated packages and purging the configuration files but NOTHING is fixing it. I can't keep having to resort to printing pages one at a time, it's too time-consuming and (human) error-prone.

stryder

Member

Registered: 2009-02-28

Posts: 500

Re: Printing errors, apparent jamming

Can't help you as I don't print very often but I have exactly the same problem. Canon S600. I just use windows to print these days...

hokasch

Member

Registered: 2007-09-23

Posts: 1,461

Re: Printing errors, apparent jamming

http://bugs.ghostscript.com/show_bug.cgi?id=691733
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/21388

(I think there are some more posts on this in the board)

zoqaeski

Member

From: /earth/australia/.

Registered: 2009-09-30

Posts: 132

Re: Printing errors, apparent jamming

@hokasch: The Ghostscript bug is exactly the issue I'm getting.

EDIT: Adding the following line to my CUPS configuration seems to be a temporary fix it in most cases, but this isn't the solution.

RIPCache 1024m

This was suggested by BurntSushi in https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 23#p866723

Last edited by zoqaeski (2010-12-21 22:17:13)

stryder

Member

Registered: 2009-02-28

Posts: 500

Re: Printing errors, apparent jamming

@hokasch: thanks. Downgrading to 8.71 seems to do the trick. Will just hold till the bug is squashed.