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7.14
I am using BSD lpr
(Slackware, Debian,
older distributions)
and some options
chosen in LLPR
don’t seem to take
effect.
Legacy BSD lpr systems have a hard limitation on the
length of the option string that can be passed to the
printing system. As such, if you selected a number of
different options, the length of the options may have
exceeded and some of your choices won’t be passed
to the programmes responsible for implementing
them. Try to select fewer options that deviate from
the defaults, to save on memory usage.
I am trying to print
a document in
Landscape mode,
but it prints rotated
and cropped.
Most Unix applications that offer a Landscape
orientation option in their printing options will
generate correct PostScript code that should be
printed as is. In that case, you need to make sure
that you leave the LLPR option set to its default
Portrait setting, to avoid unwanted rotations of the
page that would result in cropped output.
Some pages come
out all white
(nothing is printed),
and I am using
CUPS.
If the data being sent is in Encapsulated PostScript
(EPS) format, some earlier versions of CUPS (1.1.10
and before) have a bug preventing them from being
processed correctly. When going through LLPR to
print, the Printer Package will work around this issue
by converting the data to regular PostScript. However,
if your application bypasses LLPR and feeds EPS data
to CUPS, the document may not print correctly.
I can’t print to an
SMB (Windows)
printer.
To be able to configure and use SMB-shared printers
(such as printers shared on a Windows machine), you
need to have a correct installation of the SAMBA
package that enables that feature. The “smbclient”
command should be available and usable on your
system.
My application
seems to be frozen
while LLPR is
running.
Most Unix applications will expect a command like the
regular “lpr” command to be non-interactive and thus
return immediately. Since LLPR is waiting for user
input before passing the job on to the print spooler,
very often the application will wait for the process to
return, and thus will appear to be frozen (its windows
won’t refresh). This is normal and the application
should resume functioning correctly after the user
exits LLPR.
How do I specify the
IP address of my
SMB server?
It can be specified in the “Add Printer” dialogue of the
configuration tool, if you don’t use the CUPS printing
system. Unfortunately, CUPS currently doesn’t allow
to specify the IP address of SMB printers, so you will
have to be able to browse the resource with SAMBA in
order to be able to print.
Some documents
come out as white
pages when
printing.
Some versions of CUPS, especially those shipped with
Mandrake Linux before the 8.1 release, have some
known bugs when processing PostScript output from
some applications. Try upgrading to the latest version
of CUPS (at least 1.1.14). Some RPM packages for
most popular distributions are provided as a
convenience with this Linux Printing Package.
Problem Possible Cause and Solution
I have CUPS and
some options (such
as N-up) seem to be
always enabled
even though I don’t
pick them in LLPR.
There may be some local options defined in your ~/
.lpoptions file, which is manipulated by the lpoptions
command. These options will always be used if not
overridden by LLPR settings. To get rid of all options
for a printer, run the following command, replacing
“printer” with the name of the queue: lpoptions -x
printer
I configured a
printer to print to a
file, but I get
“Permission denied”
errors.
Most printing systems will not run as the super-user
but as a special user (usually “lp”). Therefore, make
sure that the file you have chosen to print to is
accessible to the user owning the spooler daemon.
On my PCL (or SPL)
printer, I sometimes
get error messages
printing instead of
my document.
Unfortunately, some Unix applications may generate
non-compliant PostScript output that may not be
supported by Ghostscript, or even the printer itself in
PostScript mode. You can try to capture the output to
a file and view the results with Ghostscript (gv or
ghostview will allow you to do so interactively) and
see if you get error messages. However, since the
application is fault at probably, contact your software
vendor to inform them of the issue.
Some color images
come out all black.
This a known bug in Ghostscript (until GNU
Ghostscript version 7.05) when the base color space
of the document is indexed color space and it is
converted through CIE color space.
Because Postscript uses CIE color space for Color
Matching System, you should upgrade Ghostscript on
your system to at least GNU Ghostscript version 7.06
or later. You can find recent Ghostscript versions at
www.ghostscript. com.
Problem Possible Cause and Solution