[cups] Guidance on troubleshooting printing to USB-connected brother laser printer

[Brian Potkin]

On Mon 28 Sep 2020 at 14:32:36 +0530, Banibrata Dutta wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> Looking for some guidance on how to troubleshoot an issue where I am able
> to print to a new Brother HL L2321D (L2320 series) laser printer, connected
> to the host PC running Ubuntu MATE 20.04 over USB. I have installed the
> manufacturer provided drivers. After installation of the driver, I could
> print from within LibreOffice a 2 page document, on 2 sheets.
> 
> The issues seen are:
> 1. Printing a 4-page PDF from within Firefox resulted in only 1st page
> being printed. There was no paper jam but remaining 3 pages weren't printed.
> 2. Printing of a webpage that fit into 1 page (from Firefox) also printed
> fine.
> 3. Printing the same 4-page PDF (from step-1) opened in Evince Viewer (PDF
> viewer on Ubuntu MATE) when printed printed first 2 pages, back-2-back
> (i.e. 2 sided, thanks to this printer's auto-duplexer, since I had selected
> that option), but remaining 2 pages not printed.

Both Firefox and Evince convert this 4-page PDF into another PDF before
sending to the printing system. You can choose to troubleshoot using
this PDF (it will be one of the d* files) or the original 4-page PDF or
both.

You will have a PPD for the printer in /etc/cups/ppd. Execute

 sudo cupsfilter -p PPD_in_/etc/cups/ppd -m application/vnd.cups-postscript your4-pagePDF > out.ps 2>log

This tests the non-vendor part of the filtering system. View out.ps.
Read log. Comment.

Cheers,

Brian.