[cups.general] Printing to a file...

[Helge Blischke]

Your backend exited with status 1, that means some error occurred.
Perhaps you could wrap the pcl2pdf utility with strace (or whatever the 
system call trace is known as) and look for the error codes.

Helge


Daniel Hawker wrote:
> 
> >
> > Get that script (link as from the CUPS web site)
> >
> >              ftp://ftp.kde.org/pub/kde/printing/pdfdistiller
> >
> > and edit accordingly (modify the Ghostscript command line
> > including the respective options for GhostPCL.
> >
> > Helge
> 
> Helge,
> 
> I have downloaded the above distiller backend script (previously tried
> using it before I digressed around a bit) and all *seems* fine. However
> I still don't get a pdf file at the end.
> 
> I have upped the Log level to debug to try and see what is going on.
> 
> It *seems* that the file is sent to cups as PCL as expected. CUPS then
> analyses it, sets it up and passes it to the backend. Unfortunately it
> doesn't get any further. If I look in the CUPS Print Queue (via the
> web-browser) it just says its *pending*. If I look in /var/spool/cups
> there is an appropriate spool file in there. I can then send it directly
> to pcl2pdf from the command-line and sure enough a pdf is output.
> Looking at  error_log... It just stops the job with *printer state is 3*
> ???
> 
> Any ideas???  The salient points of the error_log and also the backend
> script are below
> The backend script is *exactly* the same as the one from kde downloads
> page, but with pcl2pdf used instead of ps2pdf. As GhostPCL uses the same
> syntax as GhostScript, I presume this will work fine.
> 
> TIA
> 
> Dan
> 
> ----error_log----
> 
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] StartJob(5787, 0x80cc798)
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] StartJob() id = 5787, file = 0/1
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] StartJob: Sending job to queue tagged as
> raw...
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] job-sheets=none,none
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] banner_page = 0
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] StartJob: argv =
> "PCLPDFWRITER","5787","dh1","fileVbkVan","1","","/var/spool/cups/d05787-
> 001"
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] StartJob: envp =
> "PATH=/usr/lib/cups/filter:/bin:/usr/bin","SOFTWARE=CUPS/1.1","USER=root
> ","CHARSET=iso-8859-1","LANG=en_GB","","PPD=/etc/cups/ppd/PCLPDFWRITER.p
> pd","CUPS_SERVERROOT=/etc/cups","RIP_MAX_CACHE=8m","TMPDIR=/var/spool/cu
> ps/tmp","CONTENT_TYPE=application/vnd.cups-raw","DEVICE_URI=pclpdf://tmp
> /pdf_out/","PRINTER=PCLPDFWRITER","CUPS_DATADIR=/usr/share/cups","CUPS_F
> ONTPATH=/usr/share/cups/fonts","","",""
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] StartJob: statusfds = 4, 6
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] StartJob: filterfds[1] = 8, -1
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] StartJob: backend =
> "/usr/lib/cups/backend/pclpdf"
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] StartJob: filterfds[0] = -1, 9
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000]
> start_process("/usr/lib/cups/backend/pclpdf", 0xbfff8bf0, 0xbfff80a0, 8,
> 9, 6)
> I [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] Started backend
> /usr/lib/cups/backend/pclpdf (PID 30067) for job 5787.
> E [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] PID 30067 stopped with status 1!
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] UpdateJob: job 5787, file 0 is complete.
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] StopJob: id = 5787, force = 0
> D [19/Jan/2005:17:53:41 +0000] StopJob: printer state is 3
> 
> ----end of error_log----
> 
> ----pclpdf backend script----
> LOGFILE=/tmp/pdf.log
> PDFBIN=`which pcl2pdf`
> FILENAME=
> # this is borrowed from printpdf script for the filename
> PRINTTIME=`date +%b%d-%H%M%S`
> 
> echo "Executable: $PDFBIN" > $LOGFILE
> echo "Arguments: |$1|$2|$3|$4|$5|$6|" >> $LOGFILE
> echo $# $PRINTTIME >> $LOGFILE
> 
> # case of no argument, prints available URIs
> if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
>         if [ ! -x "$PDFBIN" ]; then
>                 exit 0
>         fi
>         echo "direct pclpdf \"Unknown\" \"PDF Writing via PCL\""
>         exit 0
> fi
> 
> # case of wrong number of arguments
> if [ $# -ne 5 -a $# -ne 6 ]; then
>         echo "Usage: pdf job-id user title copies options [file]"
>         exit 1
> fi
> 
> # get PDF directory from device URI, and check write status
> PDFDIR=${DEVICE_URI#pdf:}
> if [ ! -d "$PDFDIR" -o ! -w "$PDFDIR" ]; then
>         echo "ERROR: directory $PDFDIR not writable"
>         exit 1
> fi
> 
> echo "PDF directory: $PDFDIR" >> $LOGFILE
> 
> # generate output filename
> OUTPUTFILENAME=
> if [ "$3" = "" ]; then
>         OUTPUTFILENAME="$PDFDIR/unknown.pdf"
> else
>         # OUTPUTFILENAME="$PDFDIR/${3//[^[:alnum:]]/_}.pdf"
>         # I changed this to user name, and the printtime to track down
> who
>         # printed the PDF and when, samba printing just uses nobody
> 
>         OUTPUTFILENAME="$PDFDIR/$2-$PRINTTIME.pdf"
>         echo "PDF file: $OUTPUTFILENAME placed in: $PDFDIR" >> $LOGFILE
> fi
> 
> echo "Output file name: $OUTPUTFILENAME" >> $LOGFILE
> 
> # run GhostPCL
> if [ $# -eq 6 ]; then
>         $PDFBIN $6 "$OUTPUTFILENAME"
> #>& /dev/null
> else
>         $PDFBIN $6 "$OUTPUTFILENAME" >& /dev/null
> fi
> 
> # modify ownership and permissions on the file
> #  - world readable
> #  - owns to user specified in argument
> chmod a+r "$OUTPUTFILENAME"
> if [ "$2" != "" ]; then
>         chown $2 "$OUTPUTFILENAME"
> fi
> 
> exit 0
> 
> ----end of pclpdf backend script----

-- 
Helge Blischke
Softwareentwicklung
SRZ Berlin | Firmengruppe besscom
http://www.srz.de
tel: +49 30 75301-360