DebuggingPrintingProblems

Revision 6 as of 2007-02-19 10:48:23

Clear message

I. Printer detection

  1. Make sure that the printer is connected to your system and powered on.
  2. Unplug the printer cable from your computer, open a terminal/console and enter this command: BR $ tail -f /var/log/messages 

  3. Reconnect the printer cable, you should see some messages appearing.
  4. Press Ctrl-C to stop the logging.
  5. Find out if your printer gets detected by CUPS: BR $ lpinfo -v

II. Printingbuginfo

Attach the output of the printingbuginfo script for some useful information related to printing about your system like the version of Ubuntu you use, configured printers and the versions of important printing packages installed. The printingbuginfo script can be found here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrintingBugInfoScript.

III. CUPS error_log

This is a file where CUPS writes information about what it is doing. Almost all printing problems can be diagnosed from the error log, so it is the first place to look to start solving problems. To be useful, you must change the logging level: BR

  1. Edit the file /etc/cups/cupsd.conf, find the line LogLevel and change it to debug, save the file.

  2. Restart CUPS: BR $ sudo /etc/init.d/cupsys restart

  3. Try to print something.
  4. Attach /var/log/cups/error_log to the bug report.

IV. No or unexpected printing results

  1. Edit the file /etc/foomatic/filter.conf
  2. Find the section debug and change debug: 0 into debug: 1

  3. Try to print something.
  4. View the file /tmp/foomatic-rip.ps with a postscript viewer: BR $ sudo evince /tmp/foomatic-rip.ps

  5. Copy to home directory and change the permissions: BR $ sudo cp /tmp/foomatic-rip* ~ BR $ sudo chmod o+r ~/foomatic-rip*

  6. Attach ~/foomatic-rip.log and ~/foomatic-rip.ps to the bug report.