Large cups systems?

[Seth Galitzer]

Kurt Pfeifle wrote:
> Seth Galitzer wrote:
> 
>>>> That job I'm still
>>>> analyzing, but it's a 40MB (wow) pdf file. 
>>> How many pages? Embedded pictures with high resolutions?
>> For these jobs, files are ranging anywhere from 3 to 20 pages. 
> 
> My question was directed at that biggish 40 MByte job specifically, in
> case that was not clear.
> 
>> One of
>> them used a Japanese font.  The one that I was able to print later in
>> the day from the original document was an excerpt from a journal, mostly
>> text with a few simple B&W figures.  I haven't examined the others yet.
>>  I'll post an update here in a bit.
>>
>>> What happens if you use Acrobat to "Save As..." under a different name?
>>> Does it then shrink considerably in size?
> 
> This question was about the same job.

OK, so the big 40MB file, turns out it was 20 pages-worth of scanned
images.  Somebody was using the scanner for a copier and was copying
some pages out of a book.  Anyway, the source doc was 70MB, so yay for
PS getting almost 2:1 compression.  I didn't see anything else funny
about the job, other than it was freaking huge.

> 
>>>> lp       26063  0.2  0.0   3204  1180 ?        S    16:59   0:00
>>>> n232-hp4600 2282 userfoo smbprn.00000234 grn.pdf 1
>>>> job-uuid=urn:uuid:2add51a9-f8b6-3aba-42c9-33cfbdc3a12b
>>>> /var/spool/cups/d02282-001
>>> A job title starting with "smbprn.000" is an indication for the job
>>> having arrived via Samba, not Mac OS X. Mac OS X would talk CUPS-to-
>>> CUPS and IPP, no?
>>>
>> In our case, setting up the printer via samba on Mac clients seems to
>> work the best. 
> 
> So they do indeed manually install their printers, and use the smb://
> backend (which uses smbspool) to create their printers???
> 
> And *that* is supposed to work better than using CUPS browsing, which
> shows the printers available on the CUPS servers automatically?

I spent a lot of time looking up docs for OSX on how to add network
printers via CUPS.  Most of my OSX users are on laptops and connect via
wireless.  For reasons which I won't go into here, the wireless network
is on an entirely separate segment from my wired network, and is thus
outside of our firewall.  (I can explain this over that beer sometime,
if you really want to hear the story.)  I'm no OSX expert, I barely use
it myself.  In my testing, and in my minions' testing, adding the
printer via samba seemed to be the best/easiest/whatever way.  If any
OSX users out there want to prove me wrong, I'm all ears.  If all I need
is port 631 open in the firewall to make it work, that's easy enough.
But if there are any other tricks needed to make it work, please let me
know.

So, you ready for the new info now?  I think I have narrowed the problem
down to printing from Acrobat 8.  I can print fine from Acrobat 7 on
Linux and Windows, both to my hp8150 and hp4000, PSv2 and PSv3.  As soon
as I try from Acrobat 8 (not available on Linux), it doesn't matter the
printer or PS version, or if I print to a PS file first, or if I try a
copy made from "Save As" from acrobat, I always get KID3 exiting with
status 3 and "error: Illegal seek (29)".  The document I've been testing
this with today uses Japanese fonts, but doesn't seem to have anything
else "unusual" about it.  I was able to get the font updates fine for
both Linux and Windows and the document seems to render normally.

I'll try it from OSX tomorrow and see if I can duplicate these findings
there.  Let me know if you want to look at the logs or spool files and
I'll pastebin them somewhere.  I have not confirmed what versions of
Acrobat my users are running and who is having success or failure.

More tomorrow.  Thanks again for letting me prolong this thread.

Seth