[cups.general] Printing from 32-bit app on 64-bit Linux

[John Jason Jordan]

Everyone tells me it can't be done. So far they are right, but I'm damn
close. I'm hoping the experts here can make it finally happen.

I have Ubuntu Feisty amd64 and CUPS installed with various printers,
and all usually work fine. I have only a couple of 32-bit apps and only
one that I need to print from - Adobe Reader 8.1 for Linux.
Unfortunately, not only do I need to print from Adobe Reader 8.1, but I
REALLY need to print from it. I run a small publishing company and I
print to laser printers from this computer. As soon as I can get this
working I can dump Windows forever.

During beta testing for Adobe Reader 8.1 I was one of the beta testers.
One of the reasons Adobe wanted me as a beta tester was because I was
unable to get a drop-down list of my CUPS printers in the (then) Adobe
Reader 7.0.9. After numerous e-mails back and forth with the developers
I thought we had it solved. (This procedure should also work if you
have 7.0.9.) The procedure was the following:

----------------
First, download the following libraries, being sure to pick the 386
versions: http://packages.ubuntu.com/feisty/libs/libcupsys2
http://packages.ubuntu.com/feisty/libs/libgnutls13
http://packages.ubuntu.com/feisty/libs/libgcrypt11
http://packages.ubuntu.com/feisty/libs/libgpg-error0
http://packages.ubuntu.com/feisty/libs/liblzo1
http://packages.ubuntu.com/feisty/libs/libopencdk8
http://packages.ubuntu.com/feisty/libs/libtasn1-3

Next, make a folder to put the libraries into. I made one like this:
mkdir ~/Desktop/Adobe-CUPS

Then, extract each of the above libraries to the folder you just
created using the following command. Note that I downloaded the
libraries to ~/Desktop:

dpkg -x ~/Desktop/name-of-i386.deb-file ~/Desktop/Adobe-CUPS

Next, change the permissions on libcups.so.2

chmod +x ~Desktop/Adobe-CUPS/usr/lib/libcups.so.2

And finally, before launching reader you have to run the following
command (note you will have to change the path if you used a different
folder than I did for the libraries):

export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=~/Desktop/Adobe-CUPS/usr/lib:/usr/lib:
$LD_LIBRARY_PATH

Then launch Adobe Reader 8.1 as usual. 
---------------

OK, the developers and I worked that out during the beta test for 8.1.
Now that it has been finally released I installed the release version,
and then went through the above procedures. Sure enough, I now have the
drop-down list of printers installed in CUPS in the the Reader 8.1
print dialog box. But here's the remaining problem: 

When I send a print job it never appears in the queue. E.g., I open the
printers folder displaying all the printers I have installed. Normally
when I send a job to a printer it appears under the icon for the
printer for a bit while the job is printing, like "1 print job." When I
send a print job from Adobe Reader nothing ever appears under the icon
for the printer. 

Note also that this appears to be a problem only on 64-bit Ubuntu. I
heard from at least one other user on a different 64-bit distro (Fedora
7?) and he had no problem. So evidently the source of the problem is
that 64-bit Ubuntu does not install these 32-bit libraries, but other
distros do. And users of 32-bit distros never have a problem.

I'm hoping that the collective wisdom of the CUPS gurus here will lead
me to the final answer. Is it yet another library that I'm missing?
Something else? Any suggestions welcome!