[gentoo-user] CUPS can't print

[gentoo-user] CUPS can't print

[maxim wexler]

Hi group,

This printer, HP Laserjet 4 plus, works fine in WinXP. According to localhost:631 the printer was set up successfully but when I tried to print a test page the printer made some whirring noise then stopped and went off-line. In the LED readout on the printer it says: PC Load H4. According to the error log the job was "completed successfully".

The printer does not appear in dmesg but according to the gentoo printing howto this is not critical. I'm using cups-1.3.7-r1.

Any help appreciated

Maxim


      

Re: [gentoo-user] CUPS can't print

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 01 October 2008 21:31:42 maxim wexler wrote:
> Hi group,
>
> This printer, HP Laserjet 4 plus, works fine in WinXP.

hplip?

In my experience vast ranges of HP's troublesome printers JustWork(tm) when 
you throw net-print/hplip at the problem



-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] CUPS can't print

[Stroller]

On 1 Oct 2008, at 20:31, maxim wexler wrote:
> This printer, HP Laserjet 4 plus, works fine in WinXP. According to  
> localhost:631 the printer was set up successfully but when I tried  
> to print a test page the printer made some whirring noise then  
> stopped and went off-line. In the LED readout on the printer it  
> says: PC Load H4. According to the error log the job was "completed  
> successfully".

Hi Maxim,

Is it possible the LED display on your LJ4 is broken, and it's in fact  
trying to display "Load A4"?

This is a European translation of the old Officespace "load letter"  
joke - A4 being a paper size about the same size as the US standard  
letter paper - and it seems likely to me that:

1) pressing the "ready" or "ok" button on the printer will cause it to  
print on the letter paper currently in the tray.  (At least, this  
works the other way round, when a European printer says "load letter",  
but then A4 is c 1" longer than letter).

2) your printer is set to the wrong paper size somewhere. You may be  
able to find this among the settings in http://localhost:631 but it  
may also be in the menus on the printer itself. Don't neglect this!  
It's intended to tell the printer what sizes of paper are in each of  
its trays. This may work fine in XP because it ignores or overrides  
the printer's own settings, but may be respected by CUPS.

I should add that the LJ4 is old enough it should be supported under  
CUPS without the net-print/hplip software mentioned by Alan. I've  
certainly had one working here without it - I'm not sure if mine was a  
4, 4+ or 5, to be honest, because I'm using a 4000-series now, still  
without hplip. I think I have always had Postscript on my LaserJets,  
but I don't think that'll make much difference.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] CUPS can't print

[maxim wexler]

> 
> Is it possible the LED display on your LJ4 is broken, and
> it's in fact  
> trying to display "Load A4"?

Yes, 'H4' could very well be 'A4'. But now, since running emerge -C hpjis and emerge hplip, the error I'm getting is 'W2 INVALID PERS' which, according to the ambiguous error chart taped to the machine, may have something to do with not having Postscript installed. Well, under /usr/portage/virtual there is no postscript but there is ghostscript which *is* installed.

> 1) pressing the "ready" or "ok" button
> on the printer will cause it to  
> print on the letter paper currently in the tray.  (At
> least, this  
> works the other way round, when a European printer says
> "load letter",  
> but then A4 is c 1" longer than letter).

"Ready" is merely an LED and not a functioning button. 

There is an 'MP Paper Size' button on top of the printer but clicking it does nothing.

FWIW, the printer will print a test page after clicking 'Finish' in hp-setup. But attempting to print any other file results in the "invalid personality" error mentioned above.

mw


      

Re: [gentoo-user] CUPS can't print

[Mark Knecht]

On Wed, Oct 1, 2008 at 12:31 PM, maxim wexler <blissfix@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi group,
>
> This printer, HP Laserjet 4 plus, works fine in WinXP. According to localhost:631 the printer was set up successfully but when I tried to print a test page the printer made some whirring noise then stopped and went off-line. In the LED readout on the printer it says: PC Load H4. According to the error log the job was "completed successfully".
>
> The printer does not appear in dmesg but according to the gentoo printing howto this is not critical. I'm using cups-1.3.7-r1.
>
> Any help appreciated
>
> Maxim

I recently had this sort of problem but only when printing across the
network. In my case I had entries in /etc/locale.gen on all my
machines that looked like this:

en_US ISO-8859-1
en_US.UTF-8 UTF-8

For some reason (which I did ask about on this list but don't think I
got any responses) the 8859-1 entry has started causing new problems
with CUPS. I removed that entry (on my print server only), regenerated
the locales on the server and everything started working again.

I have NO idea what caused this. I always worked before. The clue was
in the /var/log/cups error files.

Probably this has nothing to do with your exact problem but keep it in
the back of your mind if you can't find another solution.

Good luck,
Mark

Re: [gentoo-user] CUPS can't print--RESOLVED

[maxim wexler]

--- On Wed, 10/1/08, maxim wexler <blissfix@yahoo.com> wrote:

> From: maxim wexler <blissfix@yahoo.com>
> Subject: [gentoo-user] CUPS can't print
> To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org
> Date: Wednesday, October 1, 2008, 12:31 PM
> Hi group,
> 
> This printer, HP Laserjet 4 plus, works fine in WinXP.
> According to localhost:631 the printer was set up
> successfully but when I tried to print a test page the
> printer made some whirring noise then stopped and went
> off-line. In the LED readout on the printer it says: PC Load
> H4. According to the error log the job was "completed
> successfully".
> 
> The printer does not appear in dmesg but according to the
> gentoo printing howto this is not critical. I'm using
> cups-1.3.7-r1.
> 
> Any help appreciated
> 
> Maxim

So, I found there's two ways to load this thing: a stack of paper in a tray at the bottom or individually via a fold out door above the tray
<slaps own forehead>. Then it's a question of adjusting 'Properties' in the print dialogue. 'A4' or 'Letter' before clicking 'Print' a second time. 

Now if I can just figure out how to un-bold the font: way to much ink being used ;)