[wplug-bsd] FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE Printer Issues

[Bill Moran]

Benjamin Slavin wrote:
> -----> MODERATELY DETAILED ACCOUNTING
> Now the real problem... I have a HP DeskJet 880C running off of a USB 
> connection. I installed GhostScript, and HPIJS, and followed the 
> instructions in the FreeBSD Handbook 
> [http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/printing.html] 
> coupled with the instructions for LPD from linuxprinting.org 
> [http://www.linuxprinting.org/lpd-doc.html] to get the printer up and 
> running.
> 
> I am able to print ASCII text, without a problem, however, attempting to 
> print PostScript files doesn't go so well. I first tried to download a 
> page for alignment 
> [http://www.linuxprinting.org/download/printing/align.ps] and print it, 
> and found that it would print 0.25 to 2.0 inch sections at a time. That 
> is, it would print the first two inches on the first page, then the next 
> two inches on the next page, and so on. Also, color is not correct, and 
> the positioning of the images on the page is also not always correct.
> 
> I tried to install CUPS, but that was a disaster. The port didn't work 
> (produced errors, and I found reporting of similar circumstances 
> online), so I compiled from source, and that was little better. It 
> installed, it allowed me to configure the printer, but then refused to 
> print. I became very dismayed when there was no "make uninstall" 
> available, and realized that CUPS had polluted my system, so I decided 
> to just disable it for now.

This may not be a lot of help, but "make deinstall" should work.

> LPRng was my next hope, so I compiled the port, and tried to install it. 
> CUPS had left, for example, lpc in a directory which was searched before 
> the location for LPRng, so I was forced to manually uninstall all of 
> CUPS. I did this, and configured LPRng with lprngtool, and some help 
> from the linuxprinting page mentioned above. I had issues printing until 
> I set /dev/ulpt0 to [chmod 777] (which I am not entirely comfortable 
> doing). After doing this, the printer functioned exactly as with LPD. 
> ASCII prints correctly, but PostScript does not.

It doesn't sound like LPR/LPRng is the point of issue (since they both
act the same)  And as an FYI, it's not the place to look for those type
of printing problems anyway.  LPR/LPD (and the equivalents in LPRng) do
not process the data on its way out, they only manage the queue and
the communication.  I suppose it's possible that it's a communication
problem, but unlikely.

I would first look into problems with the postscript processing.  I
believe postscript has several versions, and you may be sending the
printer a postscript file that it's not compatible with.  First off,
is that printer postscript capable at all?  You might have good success
using software such as apsfilter or magicfilter to automagically
convert your print jobs to the required data format.

> I am using the foomatic-rip program from linuxprinting, so maybe this is 
> the problem, but I cannot see how it would be.
> 
> -----> QUESTIONS
> Does anyone have any suggestions for how to resolve this?
> 
> Is there any way for me to get back the original FreeBSD LPD without 
> reinstalling?

You should be able to "make deinstall" LPRng ... assuming the port maintainer
did his job correctly.  I haven't done this with LPRng, so I can't say for
sure.

Hope this is helpful.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com