cups has the wrong paper size

timetrap · 2008-09-14 15:59:43

I have installed and configured cups (works great). But on my home printer a brother HL-2170W I can print, but the printed area is offset. So in effect it looks like the printed area bleeds off the bottom of the page.

When I print a test page I get the results:

Page Size: 8.28x11.69in
Lower Left: 0.00x0.00in
Upper Right: 8.28x11.69in

I have selected Letter on the cups configuration page, same results. I then selected A4, same results.

What's going on?

(BTW, I have used this installation on another printer and it works fine)

geognu · 2008-10-07 09:45:27

Same problem here, with brother mfc 820 cw (mfc210c ppd), but page size is always 8.5x11.0 even if I put a4 or anything else as default paper size. Seems definitely a cups on arch problem, never had such on other distros, didn't find a way to solve the problem manually editing the ppd!

pointone · 2008-10-07 16:31:29

I had a similar problem in Debian where I needed to set /etc/papersize, the paper size in CUPS, as well as the paper size in Firefox/Opera as letter before it would print correctly. I spent hours just changing CUPS/browser settings before finding /etc/papersize.

Not sure if Arch has /etc/papersize, but take a look.

geognu · 2008-10-08 14:45:15

Today I've solved the problem this way (sorry no /etc/papersize in arch!!): first I've installed brother drivers form aur repo (yaourt -Ss brother, choose the proper one), this led me to the wrong pagesize error. Second I've rpmextracted cupswrapper rpm from brother's support site into a temp directory, manually edited the cupswrapper command to point all the init.d entries to rc.d and issued a ./cupswrapper.... voilà! Now my MFC works pretty well for printing. Let's face the scanner!!!

geognu · 2008-10-08 15:39:14

Just for future reference: brscan2 --- adding user to scanner group is not enough, neither setting /usr/lib/sane/* to group scanner. Following Brother's direction for Ubuntu I've added the following section to /etc/udev/rules.d/81-arch.rules:

# USB devices (usbfs replacement)
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", MODE="0666"
SUBSYSTEM=="usb_device", MODE="0666"

and everything went fine.

Do we need to edit wikis?

G_Syme · 2008-10-31 18:46:50

geognu wrote:

Same problem here, with brother mfc 820 cw (mfc210c ppd), but page size is always 8.5x11.0 even if I put a4 or anything else as default paper size. Seems definitely a cups on arch problem, never had such on other distros, didn't find a way to solve the problem manually editing the ppd!

I've got the same problem, using a brother DCP-115C with the brother MFC-210C driver from AUR. But I don't think CUPS is the problem, as I've never had any problems with other printers on Arch. Also, the same device works flawlessly with Ubuntu, where I've used the dep-packages provided from brother.
So AFAICT the problem might lie in the Arch/AUR packages for those brother printers.

What comes to my mind if I look at the brother packages in AUR is that all of them seem to use the rpm packages from brother. Maybe there's a relevant difference between the deps and rpms...?

G_Syme · 2008-11-05 14:40:53

After some days of experimenting I am pleased to announce that a have understood the problem, and even provided a solution, at least for the Brother MFC-210C printer.

The problem is that the CUPS driver, which is just a wrapper for the (old?) LPR driver, has no control over the paper size. Thus the paper size has to be configured manually in the LPR configuration. This problem is mentioned here, at openprinting.org and (detailed with all or most options) at Brother's site.
The mentioned config tool, which seems to come under various names (brprintconf, brprintconflsr2, brprintconf_${PrinterModel}, or as for the MFC-210C, brprintconfij2), just accesses/edits the file /usr/share/brother/inf/br${PrinterModel}rc (and maybe others in that directory ...?).

So invoking

# brprintconfij2 -P MFC210C -pt A4

changes the PaperType in /usr/share/brother/inf/brMFC210Crc to A4.

I've made new packages for the MFC-210C and send them to AUR. I've also kept the distinction between the lpr and wrapper packages, for they also use different licenses. For reference, I've used the deb packages instead of the rpms, but as I've found out the debs were generated from the rpms by alien. ^^

Albeit this fact it's interesting to mention that the generated ppd and wrapper files are different from the ones from the rpms :-/
E.g. the ppd from the rpm includes concrete values for the papersizes, whereas the ppd from the deb packages doesn't... but I've found no problems with that so far...

Alp · 2009-11-02 17:11:42

/edit sorry false alarm, please delete

Last edited by Alp (2009-11-02 17:13:39)

Raffles10 · 2009-11-02 20:14:41

Same problem here, I have exactly the same setup on a Debian Testing install with cups 1.4 and printing is fine but on Arch the print formatting is off as described by the OP. Definitely a problem with Arch's implementation.

I should add this problem is with an HP Deskjet. Obviously the Brother fix doesn't work for HP, still trying to sort this out .:(

Last edited by Raffles10 (2009-11-02 20:21:20)

SysGhost · 2014-03-23 20:59:37

I can confirm this too.
Had trouble with the page margins and the printing area being off center.
Then I uninstalled the drivers from AUR, and installed the drivers from brother directly. I followed Brothers own guides. Once that was done, it all works as intended.

jasonwryan · 2014-03-23 21:57:14

Please don't necrobump: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Fo … Bumping.27

Closing

Arch Linux

#1 2008-09-14 15:59:43

cups has the wrong paper size

#2 2008-10-07 09:45:27

Re: cups has the wrong paper size

#3 2008-10-07 16:31:29

Re: cups has the wrong paper size

#4 2008-10-08 14:45:15

Re: cups has the wrong paper size

#5 2008-10-08 15:39:14

Re: cups has the wrong paper size

#6 2008-10-31 18:46:50

Re: cups has the wrong paper size

#7 2008-11-05 14:40:53

Re: cups has the wrong paper size

#8 2009-11-02 17:11:42

Re: cups has the wrong paper size

#9 2009-11-02 20:14:41

Re: cups has the wrong paper size

#10 2014-03-23 20:59:37

Re: cups has the wrong paper size

#11 2014-03-23 21:57:14

Re: cups has the wrong paper size

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