certain applications can't print

Message

calcwatch · Post by **calcwatch** » Tue Dec 17, 2002 5:50 am

Hi all,

I have an HP Deskjet 722C, and I configured it with CUPS. CUPS recognizes the printer and I can print out a test page, manage print jobs, etc. without any trouble.
I can also print postscript documents using "lpr filename", and print out anything in gv or Acrobat Reader perfectly.

The weird thing is that no other applications are able to print. I've tried printing from emacs, gedit, Mozilla, Open Office, or Opera, and the same thing happens every time: the application says that it's printing, but the printer does nothing, and the print job never even shows up in CUPS.

Does anyone have an idea what could be causing this?

Thanks.

X-SoCiaL · Post by **X-SoCiaL** » Wed Dec 18, 2002 10:19 am

Hey, I got the same problem here ... I can print without any problems from Kate but cant print from Konqueror?

Whats the problem?

iwasbiggs · Post by **iwasbiggs** » Tue Sep 30, 2003 11:35 pm

This is still an issue. I think the problem lies within the use of Win Printers (I have a Deskjet 720c and the problem persists). I can $lpr file.ps and print fine, but selecting lpr from a gnome application or mozilla prints nothing. Starting the application as root allows printing!

Oh, for me, the OpenOffice.org 1.1rc4 Ximian printing worked as a user...

Just tried gedit as a user from the console, and after selecting print, I get the error "lpr: unable to create temporary file." Hrm.....

I also noticed that my CUPS subsystem and printer are only recognized if I run gedit as root!

Any ideas on where to look for configuration or permission errors?

Current DE is Xfce4, but I have gnome-settings-daemon running. Furthermore, the problem persists with Gnome 2.4 so I don't think it's an external application.

I (my user) is already in the lp group (as in the cupsd.conf)....

This thread was also interesting, but I haven't tried the solution:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php? ... r+printing

Roguelazer · Post by **Roguelazer** » Wed Oct 01, 2003 12:03 am

Wild guess, but what are the permissions on /dev/lp0 or /dev/usb/lp0?

iwasbiggs · Post by **iwasbiggs** » Wed Oct 01, 2003 7:32 am

Roguelazer wrote:Wild guess, but what are the permissions on /dev/lp0 or /dev/usb/lp0?

Read/Writable by all. Besides, I wouldn't be able to use lpr if that was not the case. The error lies within the permissions of gnome-print somewhere (I'm using 0.37).

I've read elsewhere that chmod +s /usr/bin/lpr allows printing, in my case, actually CUPS system still wasn't recognized, but paper just went through the printer as if it had printed.

iwasbiggs · Post by **iwasbiggs** » Wed Oct 01, 2003 8:32 am

Problem solved, sorta.

If you export TMPDIR to a location that is writable by the user of the gnome-print applications before running them, gnome-print will work properly. Adding a line to your profile (/etc/profile) "export TMPDIR=/tmp" should work.

I am unsure why cups doesn't respect my being in the group lp and my associated privliges, nor why changing the cupsd.conf temp directory to a directory writable by all failed to work.

But, at least these programs are working. The error is rather ambiguous in my eyes and I am unsure as to who is at fault here (gnome-print, cups, gentoo's cups install, or me?).

webhawg · Post by **webhawg** » Wed Nov 26, 2003 4:12 am

I'm having the same trouble that was mentioned at the first of the topic. I've got cups installed and followed everything in the Gentoo Printing Guide. And, I can print test pages all day long. But I can't print from OpenOffice, Opera, Mozilla, etc. Can somebody help me out?

Does the fix mentioned above about the TMPDIR work for everyone? Is was that just a temporary fix? Please let me know.

I setup my printer with the following command.
# foomatic-configure -s cups -p Canon-BJC-240 -c file:/dev/lp0 -n Canon -d gimp-print-ijs

calhoun · Post by **calhoun** » Wed Dec 24, 2003 6:16 pm

I have the same problem. Can print a test page and from certain apps but no printing from mozilla. Gimp has a separate plug-in called gimp-print which I am emerging right now. So I'll report back if that works.

webhawg · Post by **webhawg** » Sat Jan 03, 2004 11:49 pm

Has anyone gotten cups to print? I'm still having the same problems that I mentioned from above.

calhoun...any luck with gimp-print?

douglas_slac · Post by **douglas_slac** » Sat Feb 07, 2004 8:17 pm

Just to add my 2-cents. I got my PhotoEX printer, hooked up over the parallel port, to print just fine with cups and KDE (Oh, just emerged kde-3.2, maybe I should check I can still print). But everything from kde apps would print fine, mozilla and gimp would refuse to print. No errors, no messages, just no printing.

I fixed the mozilla problem by using 'kprinter' as the print command instead of 'lp', and that worked. But I still had a problem with gimp. gimp has its own printer drivers, and I was worried about the -oraw option in lp, if that would work with kprinter.

But this 'export TMPDIR=/tmp' has seemed to work for me with gimp. Ok, one more problem fixed.

webhawg · Post by **webhawg** » Wed Feb 25, 2004 4:52 pm

After upgrading to gimp-print 4.2.5-r2, everything works. I have no idea why, but it worked for me.

Now if I can just figure out how to print text more clearly. Black is not really black...more gray than anything.

spigot · Post by **spigot** » Sat Sep 11, 2004 2:51 am

I was having the same problem described at the beginning of this thread. After going to ~x86 for cups, I figured out that cups was putting temp files in /var/tmp instead of the supposed usual of /var/spool/cups/tmp. Since /var/tmp isn't writable by user, it wouldn't print (don't know why pdf's printed, but I'm sure it's just my ignorance of how pdf printing works.)

In /etc/cups/cupsd.conf, the line that sets the temporary directory is commented out. Uncommenting that and restarting cups had no effect on my system. Could it be that cups has switched to using the TMPDIR environment variable? And if so, shouldn't there be an entry in /etc/env.d for cups?

I found this; maybe it's useful

http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?s1+g ... l+Gcups+v3

oai79 · Post by **oai79** » Tue Jan 04, 2005 4:10 am

I had the same problem, but after following the advice of exporting "TMPDIR=/tmp", the problem is solved.

But I'm wondering, shouldn't the default cupsd setting "/var/spool/cupsd/tmp" work? Why is the error from xpdf like this

Code: Select all

lpr: error - unable to create temporary file "/var/tmp/41da129319c33" - Permission denied

I even unmarked the TempDir line in cupsd.conf just to be sure. But still, the error shows that lpr uses /var/tmp. Am I missing something here?

Thanks for the help.

firex · Post by **firex** » Fri Apr 01, 2005 10:36 am

tmpdir='/tmp' solved the problem with opera printing.

settings for my opera:

external printing program: kprinter
options: --stdin