Large cups systems?

[Seth Galitzer]

Kurt Pfeifle wrote:
> Seth Galitzer wrote:
> 
>> OK, now we seem to be getting somewhere.  Thanks to the changes I made
>> yesterday, now only jobs are getting stopped without blocking the whole
>> queue.
>>
>> I had seven jobs stopped overnight, all plain PS files, all most likely
>> sent from Windows.  Of those seven, three were in the queue that I had
>> tried to use beh on and was stopped this morning.  When I resent them to
>> another printer, they all printed fine.
> 
> And what happened when sending to the same printer? And what's the
> difference between these two printers?
> 
>> So that tells me, either I
>> didn't use beh correctly or at the very least, I just shouldn't use it.
> 
> It shouldn't be needed in most cases any more, now that you can set
> an ErrorPolicy in CUPS (which was not the case in CUPS 1.1).
> 
>> The other four were on two different queues/printers (two each).  They
>> are all pdf files, all generated by Acrobat 8.0. 
> 
> And sent to what type of target printer?
> 
> (Ah, it may be a "LaserJet 5 M" according to the %%TargetDevice line.)

One of them is an HP 5M, the other is an HP 8150.  The other printer I
tried resending the jobs to is an HP 4000.  These are all LaserJets, FYI.

> 
>> Here's a sample PS
>> header from one of them:
> 
> Try to get hold of the original PDF so you can do some more experiments.
> 
> There is an UI option in most Acrobat (Reader) version that lets you
> determine the PostScript level it spits out.
> 
> You may have more luck if you (your users) set this to Level 2 (or even
> Level 1?).
> 
> Also, there may be other settings to try: "save printer memory" or
> "download asian fonts" or "optimize for portability/speed" or "print
> document" or "print document and markups and notes and annotations
> other crappy stuff my printing system can't handle" (last one is just
> kidding).
> 
> Also look for "page scaling", "rotate and resize" and similar settings.
> 
> If you can't use a Windows/Acrobat8 workstation and take some time for
> testing, you could go to the user and "print to file" with various
> settings, and use these files to testprint them from a unix command
> line.

I have now tried reprinting one of the original source documents from a
Windows machine win Acrobat Reader 8.0, trying both PS v2 and PS v3 and
couldn't make it die.  Argh, sometimes I hate Windows.  Actually, I hate
Windows all the time.

[snip]

> 
> What would also be of interest is the Ghostscript commandline
> used by foomatic-rip. It's in the log, further above...
> 

Speaking of logs, is there a way to adjust the built-in log rotation
policy?  I seem to be losing logs quickly, making it hard to do
long-term debugging.  I suppose this is documented somewhere...

[snip]
> 
> If you look at the PDF in Acrobat, do you see any "weird" parts on
> it, such as "transparency" areas? Asian or other (to us) foreign
> fonts?

The one original doc I was just playing with was pretty simple.  I
didn't see anything really odd with it.  Looks like an excerpt from a
journal of some kind.

> 
>> and the job goes into "stopped" status.  Other failed pdf jobs
>> exhibit the same behavior: partial printing (seems to be approximately
>> half the document) and then KID3 exits with status 3 and kills the process.
>>
>> My next test will be to reprint the original document from another
>> version of acrobat (or other pdf reader) and see if I get the same
>> errors.  I'll keep you posted.
> 
> Yes, please.
> 
> Don't forget with the print settings in Acrobat's print dialog.
> 
>> I feel like we're getting closer to an answer here.  Is it possible
>> acrobat is behaving badly?  Should I try a different engine (eg *not*
>> hpijs)?
> 
> Well, hpijs is officially supported by the HP folks, and the
> foomatic-rip path is too (which invokes hpijs), and the PPD
> you installed is maintained by them, so....
> 
> But yes, you could try to grab the Mac or MS Windows version
> of the PS driver's PPD for that model, and simply install that
> on CUPS (you'll have to see if the PPD supports all the print
> options you need).

Looks like Gentoo includes a very old version of hplip, but that hplip
package includes a pretty recent version of hpijs.  I tried manually
installing the latest hplip from tarball, but the drivers weren't listed
in the cups gui.  Is there any special tapdance you need to do to get
cups to find those files?  I thought they were dynamically read from
/usr/share/ppds, but that doesn't appear to be the case (unless I'm
missing something, which is entirely possible).

> 
>> You want me to provide more of the jobfile and error_log?  I can
>> pastebin them somewhere.  Just let me know if that would be helpful.
> 
> I'd be interested to have short look at it (but won't necessarily
> respond with another comment).
> 
> Just make sure that you past the snippet for the complete job
> (starting with "print_job: auto-typing file...")

I'll get this a little later.

> 
>> Thanks for your continued help.
> 
> I'm just expecting that in return you'll publically retract your open-
> ing statement where you said about CUPS "the whole system seems so
> flaky that if you sneeze too hard it falls apart", and bow three times
> towards Maryland (CUPS' birth place) to make up for your sins...

OK, I withdraw that statement.  It seems my cups problems are largely my
fault.  I think I will revise that statement so say "Windows seems so
flaky...".  Any argument there? :)  Hrm, MD is East of me, as is Mecca.
 Coincidence? ...

If you ever find yourself in KS, I'll buy you a beer. :)

Thanks.
Seth

> 
> :-))
>