Arch Linux

dtmc

Member

Registered: 2011-05-03

Posts: 27

Printer printing funny

Not the most helpful topic, I know, sorry.

I'm not entirely certain this is, in fact, an Arch problem - I'm hoping someone can suggest some tests I could run.

I have a networked HP OfficeJet 6310 which has previously worked flawlessly under Arch but which has, today, started printing a faint shadow behind everything, making everything a little fuzzy and unpleasant to read.  I have tried printing from Firefox and LibreOffice and have printed test pages through cups and the HPLIP printer monitor and they all display this.

However, when I use the controls on the printer front panel to print a 'test page' (Setup > 6 - Tools > Clean Cartridges) the print comes out crisp and clear.

I've tried rebooting the computer (both before and after doing a pacman -Syu, just in case), printer and even the router, singly and in combination and have tried cleaning and aligning the cartridges and installed new cartridges, all to no effect.

Any ideas?

Many thanks, in advance,

David Shaw

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,456

Website

Re: Printer printing funny

The only time my printer prints funny is when I

$ lp `curl xkcd.com`

Sorry.  I can't be of any real help.

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

/dev/zero

Member

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2011-10-20

Posts: 1,247

Re: Printer printing funny

Hi David,

It may help illustrate your point if you can scan one of the badly-printed pages and post the image to an image hosting site.

When you select "Print to File" as your printer, does the resulting file look okay?

Do you have access to a different printer that you could test?

What happens when you print a text file with lp/lpr?

dtmc

Member

Registered: 2011-05-03

Posts: 27

Re: Printer printing funny

Interesting.  When I 'lp /etc/rc.conf' the print comes out fine - nice and crisp and clear.

An example of what I'm getting from Firefox and LibreOffice is up at http://imagebin.org/188511

Hopefully it'll explain what's happening.

David Shaw

David Batson

Member

Registered: 2011-10-13

Posts: 640

Re: Printer printing funny

Looks like others are having a similar issue: https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/889306

dtmc

Member

Registered: 2011-05-03

Posts: 27

Re: Printer printing funny

Looks like others are having a similar issue: https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/889306

Hmm, yes.  Downgrading to hplip 3.10.9 seems to clear the problem up, so it looks likely that it's the same bug.  Guess I'll just have to wait and see if it gets fixed in the next release.

Many thanks for that,

David Shaw

David Batson

Member

Registered: 2011-10-13

Posts: 640

Re: Printer printing funny

Glad the link helped you find a solution for now.