[cups] PDF workflow with old server?

[Johan Bengtsson]

Hi,

We have a server running cups 1.4.6 and Linux clients running 1.7.5.

Client config:
[elijah at upsilon ~]$ cat  /etc/cups/client.conf
ServerName print.chalmers.se

This has led to very slow printing from Linux clients, with print jobs taking
very long time or hanging, blank pages etc.
I guess the problem must be that the Linux clients are now outputting pdf
while the server is still running a ps-based workflow.
We have approx. 500 postscript-enabled network printers
and we think that most of them should be able to handle pdf as well.

We are not so keen on upgrading the server right now, so we've tried some
workarounds. We thought that if only we could run the pdftopdf filter
from a current cups version everything would be ok, but maybe we're mistaken?
We set up another server with cups-filters-1.0.35-15.el7_0.1.x86_64 installed.
Then we ran pdftopdf over ssh from that server. This results in fast printouts
but option handling like tray selection is ignored.

What filters are needed for a pure pdf workflow? I thought only pdftopdf was
needed, but when I look at the database www.linuxprinting.org some ppd:s seem
to have a foomatic-rip filter line:

*cupsFilter:	"application/vnd.cups-pdf 0 foomatic-rip"

I tried running the foomatic-rip remotely (and testing with the cupsfilter
command), but it seems to fail asking for a printername, I assume it cannot
to detect it is working with CUPS.

sh-3.2$ /usr/sbin/cupsfilter -e -m printer/zzz-aos-sv-305-color1 -p
/etc/cups/ppd/zzz-aos-sv-305-color1.ppd output.pdf | more
DEBUG: argv[0]="cupsfilter"
DEBUG: argv[1]="1"
DEBUG: argv[2]="lp"
DEBUG: argv[3]="output.pdf"
DEBUG: argv[4]="1"
DEBUG: argv[5]=""
DEBUG: argv[6]="output.pdf"
DEBUG: envp[0]="<CFProcessPath>"
DEBUG: envp[1]="CONTENT_TYPE=application/pdf"
DEBUG: envp[2]="CUPS_DATADIR=/usr/share/cups"
DEBUG: envp[3]="CUPS_FONTPATH=/usr/share/cups/fonts"
DEBUG: envp[4]="CUPS_SERVERBIN=/usr/lib/cups"
DEBUG: envp[5]="CUPS_SERVERROOT=/etc/cups"
DEBUG: envp[6]="LANG=en_US.UTF8"
DEBUG: envp[7]="PATH=/usr/lib/cups/filter:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin"
DEBUG: envp[8]="PPD=/etc/cups/ppd/zzz-aos-sv-305-color1.ppd"
DEBUG: envp[9]="RIP_MAX_CACHE=8m"
DEBUG: envp[10]="USER=lp"
INFO: Rfoomatic-rip (PID 27733) started.
INFO: Rfoomatic-rip (PID 27733) exited with no errors.
No printer definition (option "-P <name>") specified!

So do you think we could somehow keep running cups 1.4.6 on the server or are
we forced to upgrade? Is it possible to convert old style pure postscript
ppd:s to a format suitable for the pdf workflow? Which filters are needed?

-Johan Bengtsson/Chalmers IT-service