Arch Linux

keratos

Member

Registered: 2008-04-27

Posts: 138

N00b with strange printing error

Well, its not all its cracked up to be....that *buntu thang.

I've spent all weekend installing and setting up Arch on my slightly old (Amd LE1100 + 512MB RAM) PC and WOW!!! Its come to life.

I've got X working, LCD hinting - top notch rendering - KDE, USB and virtual box all working fine.

Learnt a lot about linux this weekend!

Arch rocks.

...well until I tried to print:

echo foo | lp
lp: Unsupported format 'text/plain'!

I then set about goolging and alike, but cannot find any solution.

I've installed cups and gutenprint. my PPD is installed in /etc/cups/ppd for my Epson Stylus Photo R800 printer. It is recognised and listed as a printer in KDE apps/CUPS.

The /var/log/cups/access_log file (tail) looks like this:

# tail /var/log/cups/access_log
localhost - - [28/Apr/2008:01:58:39 -0700] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 416 CUPS-Get-Printers successful-ok
localhost - - [28/Apr/2008:01:58:39 -0700] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 416 CUPS-Get-Classes successful-ok
localhost - - [28/Apr/2008:01:58:39 -0700] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 75 CUPS-Get-Default successful-ok
localhost - - [28/Apr/2008:01:58:40 -0700] "POST /printers/Epson HTTP/1.1" 200 358 Print-Job client-error-document-format-not-supported

and this is what I have in cups dir

# ls /etc/cups -Rl
/etc/cups:
total 52
-rw------- 1 root lp     82 2008-04-27 18:45 classes.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1087 2008-02-05 05:19 command.types
-rw-r----- 1 root lp   2929 2008-04-03 10:48 cupsd.conf
-rw-r----- 1 root lp   2474 2008-04-03 10:48 cupsd.conf.default
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  185 2008-04-27 18:45 lpoptions
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 4528 2008-04-28 01:46 mime.convs
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6298 2008-04-03 10:48 mime.types
drwxr-xr-x 2 root lp     22 2008-04-28 01:53 ppd
-rw------- 1 root lp    340 2008-04-27 18:45 printers.conf
-rw------- 1 root lp    333 2008-04-27 18:45 printers.conf.O
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  946 2008-03-02 09:59 pstoraster.convs
-rw-r----- 1 root lp    186 2008-04-03 10:48 snmp.conf

/etc/cups/ppd:
total 96
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 95897 2008-04-27 18:45 Epson.ppd

I also checked the /etc/cups/mime.convs because I read about a bug in ubuntu , that required a line uncommenting, so I did...

# pstoraster is part of GPL Ghostscript...
application/vnd.cups-postscript application/vnd.cups-raster     100     pstoraster

But with no joy - ineffectual.

I'm sorry but I've tried my best and dont know what to do now.

Anyone??

keratos

Member

Registered: 2008-04-27

Posts: 138

Re: N00b with strange printing error

[FIXED]

Okay, I dont understand why this is so, but I've fixed it ...

had to add my hostname (fred) to /etc/hosts

Works fine now.

I was just going through the "final checklist" and noted my host was not set. Could explain errors in the CUPS logs about not being able to contact the host.

Not sure why this fixes it, but it does.

Any offers on an explanation?

Can I just take a moment to feedback my initial views on Arch.

1. Its bloody, I mean bloody, fast !! The fastest and I've been using linux since 1989.
2. Its rock solid.
3. The WiKi is THE BEST. By far the most significant and useful resource of any distro.
4. The maintainers and developers have a very attractive support model - i.e. dont treat n00bs like jerks. We all want to learn and kind supportive welcoming households are a turn on!!
5. Long live Arch.

skottish

Forum Fellow

From: Here

Registered: 2006-06-16

Posts: 7,942

Re: N00b with strange printing error

Besides what you mentioned above, the community is awesome. There's so much talent and so many people that like to help. Welcome to the forums.

keratos

Member

Registered: 2008-04-27

Posts: 138

Re: N00b with strange printing error

Quite.

It remains to be seen if someone in the community can provide a detailed synopsis of what is happening here.

I hope so.

keratos

Member

Registered: 2008-04-27

Posts: 138

Re: N00b with strange printing error

no takers?

anyone?

can anyone explain the behaviour above

PLEASE.

many thanks in advance.

ezzetabi

Member

Registered: 2006-08-27

Posts: 947

Re: N00b with strange printing error

Many programs are made with a client-server architecture and when used in only one computer they'll use the loopback, for obtaining they can use 127.0.0.1 or your hostname.
But since you didn't add your hostname to the host file as 127.0.0.1 alias the connection fails and the effect is slowdown or even failures.

Probably it is something like that even in this case.

keratos

Member

Registered: 2008-04-27

Posts: 138

Re: N00b with strange printing error

Many programs are made with a client-server architecture and when used in only one computer they'll use the loopback, for obtaining they can use 127.0.0.1 or your hostname.
But since you didn't add your hostname to the host file as 127.0.0.1 alias the connection fails and the effect is slowdown or even failures.

Probably it is something like that even in this case.

Ah.I see.

So, are you saying then that in my case...

the lp client app is attempting to connect to the printer server on the host machine (fred) however, because fred was not defined, the client could not connect to the server app thus no printing.

This would make sense??

This does not apepar to address the issue of why I was receiving errors about "plain/text" not being a supported format (see above). I would have imagined that errors relating to "failed to connect" or something , would be more likely.