Printing troubles in Linux

[frank]

The other evening, I realized there were problems printing in Linux. Initially, this had been limited to Opera, however it also occurred with Adobe Acrobat Reader, and this was on both of my Linux systems, running SuSE 9.1.

When something does not print, I open the print job listing, click the icon for all jobs, and the print that did not come out was marked "aborted". When I go into the IPP report, it shows "aborted-by-system".

I looked in /var/log/cups and forwarded part of the log to a friend. He noticed

Bad request line "request id is styluscolor640-103 (1 file(s))"!


and stated that data being sent to the filter is bad.

Since this is happening on two different systems, with different applications, I can only guess that it appears to be a Linux issue. I found updated CUPS drivers via YaST as part of a download of files pertaining to ghostscript, but the updated drivers did not solve this problem. The printer on the other system is an Epson Stylus Color 400. The printer referenced in the above quote is the Stylus Color 640. The 640 is capable of being connected either via USB or the parallel port, however the connection did not matter as it coocurred when it was connected to both types on different occasions.

Mozilla uses the LPR command to print, and I have not had aborted print jobs with that.

Does anyone have a clue as to why these print jobs are aborting?

Opera has an option to add in a printer command which when added, will appear in the Print window as a separate item.

When I add such an option, lpr -Pstyluscolor400 is the command sent to the printer. In this instance, the job does not appear in the print jobn listing mentioned above, but even with this, the first couple of print jobs will print, then nothing. It doesn't matter whether it is a web page, or an e-mail message.

The print system used is CUPS, and the driver used is CUPS+gimp_print.

Before I decide to go back to Windows permanently, is there anything that I should look at?

Hmm...did you get the printer working on SuSE Linux 9.1 or 9.0 before? Which port did you always use for printing? USB?

[Charles]

The Stylus Color 400 printer was always connected via the parallel port.

The Stylus Color 640 on the other system can connect via USB or parallel, it will work both ways, and the problem occurred regardless of how the 640 was connected.

I did not have this problem with either SuSE 8.2 or 9.0. This started with 9.1. The printers worked perfectly. Where 9.1 uses the 2.6 kernel, I'm curious as to whether that might have something to do with it, as 8.2 and 9.0 uses the 2.4 kernel which actually ran faster on both machines.

[robert]

SuSE 9.0 would not allow a full downgrade from 9.1 to 9.0 ad 4 packages were incompatible, including CUPS (printing!), so I am in the process of installing SuSE 9.0 on the Pentium. If it works on that, and I expect that it will, then I will put 9.0 on the other machine this weekend

[Sam]

I'm glad it's working on the older version. It looks like you should stick with SUSE Linux 9.0 for the time being. A possibility is that your printers might not be supported under the newer kernel from SUSE Linux 9.1. But that's just an assumption. I wonder people have the same problems with those kinds of printers on MandrakeLinux 10.0.

[Sam]

You need to go into the server options in outlook (or outlook express) and check the "server requires authentication" under "outgoing mail server" settings. This will make outlook authenticate when sending mail. Netscape does this automatically which is why it works and outlook doesn't.

good luck,