Increasingly frequent error "foomatic-rip failed"

[Helge Blischke]

Richard Rasker wrote:

> Hello all,
> I'm running a CUPS print server under Debian Etch, connected to an old
> Epson EPL-5700 parallel port laser printer. CUPS gives the following
> information:
> 
> Description: Epson EPL-5700
> Location: Printserver
> Make and Model: Epson EPL-5700 Foomatic/hpijs-pcl5e (recommended)
> Printer State: idle, accepting jobs, published.
> Device URI: epson:/dev/lp0
> 
> This setup has always worked just fine, until recently (several weeks
> ago). Ever more often, print jobs stop with the following error message:
> "/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip failed"
> 
> Googling for this error message turned up literally dozens of possible
> vague causes, with often equally vague solutions (e.g. running aa-complain
> cupsd as root). So far, nothing worked The error appears to be related to
> graphics rendering, as it consistently happens when attempting to print a
> Google Maps page, and with some (but not all) PDF files,
> 
> Also, I downloaded & installed the appropriate PPD file again from
>   http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Epson-EPL-5700
> but to no avail.
> 
> So I set LogLevel to debug, and captured the following output from the
> Google Maps print job:
>   http://www.linetec.nl/linux/cups-error1.txt
> 
> ("Ongeldige zoekopdracht" means something like "Invalid Search Command")
> It seems that something is going wrong with the renderer:
>   Process dying with "The renderer command line returned an unrecognized
>   error code 255.", exit stat: 1
> 
> In the end, foomatic-rip exits with an error:
>   Error closing renderer
>   (/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip) stopped with status 1!
> 
> When printing a particular PDF file, a rather different error occurs (log
> excerpt):
>   http://www.linetec.nl/linux/cups-error2.txt
> 
> Here, I see "/stackoverflow in --aload--", with foomatic-rip exiting with
> code 3 instead of code 1.
> 
> Does anyone have an idea what may be the problem here? And more
> importantly, how I can solve it?
> 
> Thanks for any hints,
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Richard Rasker

Please post (an URL to) the PS jobs in question. From your error log 
snippets, it is clear that Ghostscript complained on PostScript errors.
Without looking into these jobs, it is not possible do do further 
investigation. And, do not forget to post thePPD(s) you used, as there
might be PS snippets defined that, insertet into the job, caused the 
error(s).

Helge