[opensuse] Gotchas: Greyscale only when printing from Xerox DocuPrint C20
Just a heads-up for anyone that may come across this sort of thing. On 2 recent openSUSE 10.2 installs, the C20 printed only greyscale, even though the test print from YaST (or at least the top half of it) printed in colour. The printer has worked fine for several years, and it printed colour fine on an earlier 10.2 install, without anything special having to be done (or so I thought). A 10.0 install was printing colour with no problems. It is running: cups-client-1.1.23-19 cups-1.1.23-19 cups-libs-1.1.23-19 libgnomecups-0.2.0-5 cups-drivers-1.1.23-11 cups-drivers-stp-1.1.23-11 cups-SUSE-ppds-dat-1.1.20-106 foomatic-filters-3.0.2-4 filters-2005.7.26-2 The first 10.2 is running: cups-client-1.2.7-3 cups-1.2.7-3 cups-libs-1.2.7-3 libgnomecups-0.2.2-46 cups-devel-1.2.7-3 cups-drivers-1.2.7-7 foomatic-filters-3.0.2-48 filters-2006.11.1-8 The default driver chosen by YaST is selected: CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.0 Simplified (even though this is not the one marked as "recommended" by YaST). The second 10.2 is running: cups-client-1.2.7-12.3 cups-1.2.7-12.3 cups-libs-1.2.7-12.3 libgnomecups-0.2.2-46 cups-devel-1.2.7-12.3 cups-drivers-1.2.7-7 foomatic-filters-3.0.2-4 filters-2005.7.26-2 On this machine, as part of the attempt to get colour printing, I upgraded CUPS, and also downgraded the filters packages to those that were working on the 10.0 install. The driver used on the second 10.2 was originally the Gutenprint one, as installed by YaST, but changing it to the "recommended" Foomatic/Postscript one in YaST made no difference. It was only once I rebooted that the driver change took effect, and I was able to print in colour again. On earlier installs, instead of just clicking OK as I did on the recent ones, I must have manually changed the driver from Gutenprint to Foomatic. So there are two gotchas here: (a) A default YaST printer install uses drivers which are not the "recommended" ones, leading to unexpected results. Obviously, if a driver is "recommended", this should be the one that is installed by default. (b) Changing the printer driver requires a reboot to take effect. This is one of the few instances I know of where a Linux box requires a reboot in order to have a config change "take", but I don't know the details of the printing system. If it is because certain things can only be restarted this way, then perhaps YaST should give a message to this effect. If it is because certain things have not been restarted when the driver change is made, then perhaps YaST should do the restarting automatically. -- Pob hwyl / Best wishes Kevin Donnelly www.kyfieithu.co.uk - KDE yn Gymraeg www.klebran.org.uk - Gwirydd gramadeg rhydd i'r Gymraeg www.eurfa.org.uk - Geiriadur rhydd i'r Gymraeg www.rhedadur.org.uk - Rhedeg berfau Cymraeg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On 09/12/2007 07:33 PM, Kevin Donnelly wrote:
(b) Changing the printer driver requires a reboot to take effect. This is one of the few instances I know of where a Linux box requires a reboot in order to have a config change "take", but I don't know the details of the printing system. If it is because certain things can only be restarted this way, then perhaps YaST should give a message to this effect. If it is because certain things have not been restarted when the driver change is made, then perhaps YaST should do the restarting automatically.
Are you sure just rebooting the printer would not have fixed it? I wouldn't think the kernel would be involved in the printer, except maybe usb recognition. -- Joe Morris Registered Linux user 231871 running openSUSE 10.2 x86_64 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
Hello, On Sep 12 12:33 Kevin Donnelly wrote (shortened):
(a) A default YaST printer install uses drivers which are not the "recommended" ones, leading to unexpected results. Obviously, if a driver is "recommended", this should be the one that is installed by default.
Of course it should, see https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=220712
(b) Changing the printer driver requires a reboot to take effect.
No. Changing the printer driver (i.e. the PPD) or whatever other change of a CUPS print queue doesn't even require a restart of the CUPS printing system (i.e. the cupsd). At any time the admin can run "lpadmin -p <queue> -P " to assign a new PPD (i.e. another driver) to a queue. YaST (and also other print queue setup tools) do equivalent CUPS library calls. I have no idea why in your particular case a reboot was needed. Kind Regards Johannes Meixner -- SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany AG Nuernberg, HRB 16746, GF: Markus Rex -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
On Wednesday 12 September 2007 13:48, Johannes Meixner wrote:
(a) A default YaST printer install uses drivers which are not the "recommended" ones, leading to unexpected results. Obviously, if a driver is "recommended", this should be the one that is installed by default.
Of course it should, see https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=220712
Ah, missed that one - it is relevant with hindsight, but at the time I was focussing on "greyscale". So hopefully that will be fixed in the next iteration.
(b) Changing the printer driver requires a reboot to take effect.
No. Changing the printer driver (i.e. the PPD) or whatever other change of a CUPS print queue doesn't even require a restart of the CUPS printing system (i.e. the cupsd). At any time the admin can run "lpadmin -p <queue> -P " to assign a new PPD (i.e. another driver) to a queue. YaST (and also other print queue setup tools) do equivalent CUPS library calls. I have no idea why in your particular case a reboot was needed.
Yes, I was very surprised, and had it been only one machine, I'd be inclined to say there was an oddity in the hardware. But not with two different machines having the identical problem - this was the only thing that worked on the first, and I then changed the driver on the second a couple of times before trying the reboot. But again, only a reboot worked. So there may be a gremlin somewhere in the code. On Wednesday 12 September 2007 13:29, Joe Morris (NTM) wrote:
Are you sure just rebooting the printer would not have fixed it? I wouldn't think the kernel would be involved in the printer, except maybe usb recognition.
I had earlier tried restarting the printer from cold, but that didn't fix it either. Of course, if a reboot of the printer were necessary, it would still be a good idea to flag that. But as Johannes says, in theory such reboots are not necessary. In theory ... :-) -- Pob hwyl / Best wishes Kevin Donnelly www.kyfieithu.co.uk - KDE yn Gymraeg www.klebran.org.uk - Gwirydd gramadeg rhydd i'r Gymraeg www.eurfa.org.uk - Geiriadur rhydd i'r Gymraeg www.rhedadur.org.uk - Rhedeg berfau Cymraeg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org
participants (3)
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Joe Morris (NTM) -
Johannes Meixner -
Kevin Donnelly