CUPS printing to a printer on a DI704P router

[haceaton]

I can't seem to print to my postscript printer connected to a DI704P router. I've got it configured through CUPS as an LPD/LPR printer at 192.168.0.1/lp

The cups error log includes this bit when I try to print a test page:

[mike456]

I'll take a crack at this one.

As an aside, do check linuxprinting.org forums to see if anyone has had similar problem.

I use CUPS with a DLINK 704P and a HP LJ 3P (not postscript) and I don't have lpd installed. Don't need it, CUPS does its own emulation of lp commands.

It looks like cups can't talk to lpd://192.168.0.1/lp.

I think I've seen this if you have the wrong ppd file. Go to linuxprinting.org and get the right one for your printer. Make sure its in the /etc/cups/ppd/ directory, and after you do that, run the KDE Printer Manager to use the correct PPD file. I've also read somewhere that if its a true postscript printer you have to use the PPD that came with the printer, or download one from the manufacturer.

A wrong PPD and the printer will totally ignore all printing requests because you aren't speaking its language.

mike

[haceaton]

Thanks Mike, but I've already got the correct ppd for my printer
(Brother HL1850) from linuxprinting.org installed. I used the CUPS web configuration page to select it (instead of raw). Although I believe that raw should work too (it doesn't either).

I was not asking about lpd becuase I thought CUPS needed it; I want lpd so I can try an alternative. I suppose I could search about for a manufacturer ppd file just in case.

[mike456]

Hmm, okay. I don't know about lpd/LPRNG stuff, cups has kindof limped along well enough for me.

I did read somewhere that with postscript you can send it raw. Something about the filter chain, it passes through ESP ghostscript somewhere and that formats it either to CUPS format, or it can be in postscript format that goes directly to the printer (raw).

I tried a postscript cartridge with my printer and it did print (wasn't really stable though) with the DLINK 704P. I had so many problems (even on windows) I ended up taking out the postscript cartridge and now I just print with PCL5.

Last thing I can offer is to try some different PPDs, I know my setup is really sensitive to them, if I use the wrong one (even recommended ones) it won't print at all. And sometimes all the ones I have in the /etc/cups/ppd directory are not listed in the web interface, but I have to configure them through the KDE printer manager.

[haceaton]

Ok, I got it working! It turns out I didn't have the foomatic-rip script on my machine. The CUPS quick setup guide on linuxprinting.org never mentioned it (in fact said that no rasterer was needed for a postscript printer). It looks like the foomatic-rip is used by pretty much all ppd files so maybe they expect foomatic-rip to be installed when cups is installed. For a gentoo emerge cups you don't get foomatic-rip. Perhaps you should, I don't know. Anyway the error message was a bit misleading because a blank data set (single null character) was sent as the postscript print data which the printer properly acknowledged, but for some reason cups-lpd was reporting time-outs.

I also discovered a little bug in the Brother HL-1850 ppd file that messed up duplexing and other print options and also spewed out a blank page at the end of all print jobs. On line 62, the Capital "C" is preceded by two %'s, but it should only be one: