[wplug-bsd] FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE Printer Issues

[Bill Moran]

Benjamin Slavin wrote:
> I have reinstalled FreeBSD 4.9-RELEASE, and installed apsfilter, hpijs, 
> ghostscript, (and dependencies) from their respective ports.
> 
> I have disconnected all other USB devices in the hope that maybe there 
> was too much "chatter" on the USB channel, but alas, this was not the 
> case... it still prints small portions of the page, then loads a new 
> page, then continues. Additionally, when printing a test page from 
> apsfilter's setup program, the breaks are at identical locations every 
> time.
> 
> As I had stated previously, this printer worked with other operating 
> systems on the same computer, so I'm out of ideas. Any suggestions you 
> have would be greatly appreciated.

I'm out of suggestions.  I also did a search on +freebsd +usb + printer
and it appears as though you're not the only one who's had problems.

Sounds like it's time to file a PR.  Do you have any experience filing
Problem Reports with the FreeBSD team?  If not, feel free to contact
me and I'll help you with the process.  The man page for send-pr is a
good introduction.

> Bill Moran wrote:
> 
>> [...]
>>
>>> 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.

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