Lucid cups pdf error

**LaughingHorse** · May 1st, 2010

I just upgraded from the previous version to Lucid.
I tried to print a page in Firefox as a pdf.

getting the printer selection screen up, it shows me PDF and PDF1 both have the smae message
"Backend /usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf does not exist!"

Any ideas on how to get it to exist?

I tried re-installing CUPS PDF and still no luck.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions.

**oldfred** · May 2nd, 2010

I just installed Lucid to my beta partition for testing and my reinstall script includes these commands. I have that file on both Karmic & the test lucid. I have on tried printing in Lucid yet and am back in my Karmic right now.

sudo apt-get install cups-pdf
sudo aa-complain cupsd
#chmod 777 ~/PDF
#sudo chmod 700 /usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf

I do not know know why I commented out the last two lines. I think my /PDF does not need chmod as it is a link to my data partition, but do not know about chmod on cups-pdf.

**LaughingHorse** · May 3rd, 2010

I got it solved.

Here is what I did

alt+f2 and type "gksudo browsername"
(firefox in my case)
So it would be "gksudo firefox"

Once logged in as root, I went to
http://localhost:631/

From there I was able to administrate CUPS. The CUPS-PDF was idle. So I activated it, and now I can print pdf's.

What was very strange however, is only the CUPS PDF printer was idle. After the upgrade, my Brother HL-2070N, and my Cannon ip5200 has absolutely no problem.

So the problem is solved, but what caused it in the first place when I upgraded?

**bayvista** · June 17th, 2010

I had a strange problem with this. When printing my monthly Credit Card Statement using Acroread, the first page of the PDF file was black and unreadable. The remaining pages were OK.

The problem turned out to be the Canon Printer Driver. I was printing to a Canon LBP3100. When I switched to my Brother DCP165, it printed perfectly. I will report this as a bug to Canon

**negotiation** · February 7th, 2011

LaughingHorse: please provide more detail. I've no idea from what you've written I've no idea what action to take to achieve this: 'From there I was able to administrate CUPS. The CUPS-PDF was idle. So I activated it, and now I can print pdf's.' Am able to see the options as you have described, but hit a dead end.

**akwatve** · March 22nd, 2011

I had the same probem. After doing everything mentioned here. I get a new error :

/usr/lib/cups/filter/pdftopdf failed.

Some searching revealed that libpoppler is responsible for this. But the solution seems to recompile cups to incorporate changes in the prototype of one of the functions in poppler. This is where things get uncomfortable.

Does anyone know is there is another way of fixing this without recompiling cups or libpoppler

Thanks,

**megafedt** · May 5th, 2011

Originally Posted by LaughingHorse

I got it solved.

Here is what I did

alt+f2 and type "gksudo browsername"
(firefox in my case)
So it would be "gksudo firefox"

Once logged in as root, I went to
http://localhost:631/

From there I was able to administrate CUPS. The CUPS-PDF was idle. So I activated it, and now I can print pdf's.

What was very strange however, is only the CUPS PDF printer was idle. After the upgrade, my Brother HL-2070N, and my Cannon ip5200 has absolutely no problem.

So the problem is solved, but what caused it in the first place when I upgraded?

This doesn't seem to work for me - sorry, see my other post...

**riky_6** · January 15th, 2012

I had the same problem printing a page with the CUPS PDF virtual printer: "not execute the backend"

I solved the problem running the this command:
#sudo chmod 700 /usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf

**kuifje09** · February 24th, 2013

I nedded to reinstall, because it wasn't there after the upgrade to 11.10

Then had to run /usr/sbin/cupsenable PDF

Not I could print to PDF again.

( with the system tools menu, icould not fix this )