CUPS PDF Print Problem

[mainak_sen]

I have been using Hardy for last 2 years and there were no problems and I used the print to PDF (by selecting PDF as my default printer) option very often. Ever since I upgraded to Lucid last week this is not working any longer. Even the "Print Test Page" option is not working. The various error messages I am getting are given below.
Interestingly, I have upgraded to Lucid in another machine and there also I am getting the same errors.

I shall greatly appreciate if someone could help us!

Thanks in advance!

----Error Messages-----

Print Error: There was a problem printing document 'Test Page' (job 76: 'Stopping job because the scheduler could not execute the backend.'

Stopped - Printer Configuration error

Status Messages: There is a missing print filter for printer 'PDF

[cside]

I had a similar problem, and I found that at some point Cups-PDF became uninstalled. I reselected the package, possibly just remark it for installation in Synaptic and see if this resolves your problem. Once mine was installed it all work.

[jaygo]

It seems obvious now but I didn't think to check if that package was still installed; for some reason, the upgrade to 10.10 went out of its way to uninstall cups-pdf. Thanks!

[neiljansons]

cups-pdf printing was working fine with 10.04 but the upgrade to 10.10 trashed it.
I have tried uninstalling & reinstalling with no joy
any ideas?

[Bucky Ball]

Same prob. I have cups-pdf installed and no different. Prints test page, PDF takes forever (30 minutes?) and the result is a garbled mess.

Anyone had any success? I'm using 10.10.

ps: My understanding was cups-pdf is an app. for printing a text file to a pdf file rather than a printer, not printing a pdf file to a printer.

[crazybilly]

Apparently, this was a bug in Cairo, the underlying graphics layer that Evince uses.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cairo/+bug/661724

According to the bug report, it looks like the fix rolled out in a recent update (which I can't yet confirm, as I'm installing the update now).

[Bucky Ball]

I swapped to acroread and prints no problem. :)

[neiljansons]

This thread seems to have strayed. The problem described was with Cups-Pdf printing (ie. printing to a .pdf file).
Since I upgraded to 10.10 this no longer works even though I have uninstalled and reinstalled several times.

[lmarmisa]

The installation of cups-pdf is not perfect. This program tries to write the PDF files in the folder ~/PDF, but this folder has to be created manually by the user. If the directory is not created



mkdir ~/PDF
cups-pdf does not work.

I do not know if this can be the cause of your problem.

Check if the folder PDF exists and check the contents of the config files

/etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf



...
################################################## #########################
# #
# Path Settings #
# #
################################################## #########################

### Key: Out
## CUPS-PDF output directory
## special qualifiers:
## ${HOME} will be expanded to the user's home directory
## ${USER} will be expanded to the user name
## in case it is an NFS export make sure it is exported without
## root_squash!
### Default: /var/spool/cups-pdf/${USER}

Out ${HOME}/PDF
...
and /etc/apparmor.d/usr.sbin.cupsd



...
# separate profile since this needs to write into /home
/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf {
#include <abstractions/base>
#include <abstractions/fonts>
#include <abstractions/nameservice>
#include <abstractions/user-tmp>

capability chown,
capability fowner,
capability fsetid,
capability setgid,
capability setuid,

# unfortunate, but required for when $HOME is 700
capability dac_override,

/bin/dash ixr,
/bin/bash ixr,
/bin/cp ixr,
/etc/papersize r,
/etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf r,
@{HOME}/PDF/ rw,
@{HOME}/PDF/* rw,
/usr/bin/gs ixr,
/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf mr,
/usr/lib/ghostscript/** mr,
/usr/share/** r,
/var/log/cups/cups-pdf_log w,
/var/spool/cups-pdf/** rw,
}
...
I prefer to use the Desktop folder as destination for the PDF files. So, I changed the string PDF to Desktop in the two config files and it works great.

[neiljansons]

Thanks lmarmisa for attempting to help
I had already redirected the output of cups-pdf to a directory that existed but I actually like your idea of sending it to the desktop. I have now changed it to that.

However it is still not working.

BTW the location of usr.sbin.cupsd is /etc/cups/apparmor.d/ not /etc/apparmor.d/

[lmarmisa]

BTW the location of usr.sbin.cupsd is /etc/cups/apparmor.d/ not /etc/apparmor.d/

Thanks for you comment but the mistake was in the path of the file /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf. I have fixed it in my post.