Can't print to KonicaMinolta Bizhub printers

archtaku · 2012-09-17 22:33:30

I used to be able to print to the two bizhub printers at my office, but at some point (and I print so infrequently that I can't narrow down when) I stopped being able to do so. When I sent a print job to these printers now, the printer either freezes and has to be power cycled, or the print job fails with a "Deleted Due to Error" message in the job history on the printer.

I used socket://hostname:9100/ when adding the printer via the CUPS web interface, as well as the English driver from the Linux zip file available at the following URL: http://onyxftp.mykonicaminolta.com/down … uctid=1316

Has anyone else encountered this, and found a solution? I have done web, forum, etc. searches and come up empty.

demaio · 2012-09-18 07:16:17

I can confirm some problems with BizHub printers although not only on Arch Linux. Ubuntu is also affected so I guess it's a driver (PPD) or printer problem. Symptoms here:

- printing works perfectly most of the time
- some jobs don't print at all (printer is blinking busy but the job never finishes)

I narrowed it down to the printer falling into some kind of power-save mode: When the printer is not busy for a while, the display and some machinery inside turns off. The next job wakes the printer up but it's just not printed. If I print it again, it works. So it seems every first print job after the printer falling asleep is lost. I will have to call Konica Minolta support or just experiment with longer stand-by settings if the printer supports this. (btw. windows postscript drivers work every time...)

archtaku · 2012-09-18 16:07:30

Seems to be a little bit different, though perhaps in some way related to my issue, as my print jobs fail 100% of the time, even when the printer is not in power-saving mode (for instance, right after someone else has printed).

The same PPD file worked just fine a year or two ago, so I thought it might have been a change in CUPS that was the culprit, or a change in how CUPS handles PPD drivers. But, I haven't been able to find any information to back up that hypothesis.

commx · 2012-09-21 08:35:56

I can confirm this as well, as mentioned in this thread some days ago. It seems that the printer receives the printing data from Linux, but does not receive some kind of "EOF" and therefor it cannot start printing. I've called Konica Minolta, but they were not able to help me because I have no maintainance agreement with them, so I asked our local maintainance guys to get information about this issue.

Printing somehow worked some time ago with xubuntu, but with Arch it doesnt work. Looks like the drivers have changed or somewhat. Using the Generic PCL5 driver I can print text-only, but no graphics.

commx · 2012-09-24 08:07:52

A few minutes ago I tested printing with a recent version of Ubuntu. Works like a charm. The strange thing is that the identical driver is used to print "KONICA MINOLTA C352/C300". Not sure if its a CUPS problem or a driver issue.

Update:
I've filed an entry in the Bug tracker related to this issue.

A possible workaround (this does not fix the actual problem yet!) is to configure your local CUPS instance to print through another CUPS instance running on a Ubuntu machine or VM. You may create a minimalistic Ubuntu netinstall (using the mini.iso) and just configure network and CUPS on it. You can then allow other hosts to print using the printers installed in your Ubuntu VM by enabling printer sharing on the VM and use ipp to add the printer of the Ubuntu host on your local CUPS instance. More information about this can be found in this wiki article.

Last edited by commx (2012-09-24 23:07:30)

sui · 2013-02-01 20:21:52

Any news on this issue? I am experiencing exactly the same problem on an ubuntu system. Interestingly, in my working groups there are 4 linux boxes running ubuntu (with kde), only the three of them with the most recent version (12.10 quantal quetzal) do have this problem. The one machine running the previous LTS version (12.04 precise pangolin) can print to the bizhub without a problem. The hardware is the same on all computers and so are the drivers. It must be something changed on ubuntu between 12.04 and 12.10. I thought it might be KDE related, but apparently the other folks here use gnome (I am not an archlinux user, please excuse my intrusion here). Another interesting observation: printing PDFs from acrobat reader or okular work on all machines, but printing everything else does not. Even the printer test page causes the bizhub to freeze, making a power cycle necessary (and causing lots of nice comments from the other users on the floor who all print from Windows.). As has been said in this thread, I suspect there is something akin to an 'EOF' signal missing. Any useful comment would be very welcom.

commx · 2013-02-03 18:54:40

sui wrote:

Any news on this issue? I am experiencing exactly the same problem on an ubuntu system. Interestingly, in my working groups there are 4 linux boxes running ubuntu (with kde), only the three of them with the most recent version (12.10 quantal quetzal) do have this problem. The one machine running the previous LTS version (12.04 precise pangolin) can print to the bizhub without a problem. The hardware is the same on all computers and so are the drivers. It must be something changed on ubuntu between 12.04 and 12.10. I thought it might be KDE related, but apparently the other folks here use gnome (I am not an archlinux user, please excuse my intrusion here). Another interesting observation: printing PDFs from acrobat reader or okular work on all machines, but printing everything else does not. Even the printer test page causes the bizhub to freeze, making a power cycle necessary (and causing lots of nice comments from the other users on the floor who all print from Windows.). As has been said in this thread, I suspect there is something akin to an 'EOF' signal missing. Any useful comment would be very welcom.

This does look exacly as I thought. It *might* have to do anything with newer CUPS versions. Ubuntu uses sometimes pretty old package versions compared to Arch. So maybe we have to compare the changes between the two versions on Ubuntu 12.04 / 12.10 to find out what has changed.

sui · 2013-02-04 00:11:14

commx wrote:

This does look exacly as I thought. It *might* have to do anything with newer CUPS versions. Ubuntu uses sometimes pretty old package versions compared to Arch. So maybe we have to compare the changes between the two versions on Ubuntu 12.04 / 12.10 to find out what has changed.

I think I have found the culprit (at least for me, on ubuntu). I downgraded CUPS itself, which did not help, and then a number of auxiliary packages. What made the difference was a package called 'cups-filters', which I had to pin at version 1.0.18* to avoid upgrade to 1.0.24 (which ships with ubuntu 12.10). All other CUPS-related packages could be used at their current versions.
I don't know how you can downgrade packages on Archlinux, but I found the procedure for ubuntu on the web. Good luck!

archtaku · 2013-02-20 17:40:49

I tried downgrading using the packages in the Arch Rollback Machine (http://arm.konnichi.com/extra/os/x86_64/). The printer no longer crashes, but all the PDFs I print are blank.

Printing non-PDF documents seems to work.

archtaku · 2013-02-20 18:44:49

So I've fixed the issue (for now) by rolling back Ghostscript to 9.05 (http://arm.konnichi.com/extra/os/x86_64 … pkg.tar.xz).

NOTE: This works with an up-to-date version of cups-filters, so it is not necessary to also downgrade cups-filters.

Last edited by archtaku (2013-02-20 18:55:16)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-09-17 22:33:30

Can't print to KonicaMinolta Bizhub printers

#2 2012-09-18 07:16:17

Re: Can't print to KonicaMinolta Bizhub printers

#3 2012-09-18 16:07:30

Re: Can't print to KonicaMinolta Bizhub printers

#4 2012-09-21 08:35:56

Re: Can't print to KonicaMinolta Bizhub printers

#5 2012-09-24 08:07:52

Re: Can't print to KonicaMinolta Bizhub printers

#6 2013-02-01 20:21:52

Re: Can't print to KonicaMinolta Bizhub printers

#7 2013-02-03 18:54:40

Re: Can't print to KonicaMinolta Bizhub printers

#8 2013-02-04 00:11:14

Re: Can't print to KonicaMinolta Bizhub printers

#9 2013-02-20 17:40:49

Re: Can't print to KonicaMinolta Bizhub printers

#10 2013-02-20 18:44:49

Re: Can't print to KonicaMinolta Bizhub printers

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