Cannot Print Docs

[Atip]

Suddenly if I try to print either from leafpad, abiword or firefox the pop-up
window "Print" is empty with no printer showing and consequently no printing.

The Print Preview is working.

Abiwords reports:

Failed to print document
The selected printer 'default' could not be found

My printer is set as default according to cups.

I can print a test page, I can print with applix and I can print with command:
"cat file | lpr"

I deleted the printer and put it back, still no printer showing.

What could be broken?

[knome]

I'm not sure if I can help but I notice that Print Preview from leafpad and abiword opens the "Atril" Document Viewer dialog. Do you have any problems with Atril?

[Atip]

Thanks knome!

No, as I mention the Print Preview works which is run by atril. It is that "Print" window
where one clicks on Print Preview which is empty not showing any printers. Now what is
running that "Print"?

[knome]

I can only guess that you have a problem with cups. Try restarting the cups daemon and/or try reinstalling cups.

[Atip]

If one reads my first post on this thread carefully it would tell that cups must be working,
otherwise I

-- could not print a test page

-- could not print with applixware

-- could not print using command "cat file | lpr"

I have not upgraded anything except to firefox-25.0.1

Rgerads

[westms]

If one reads my first post on this thread carefully it would tell that cups must be working,
otherwise I

-- could not print a test page

-- could not print with applixware

-- could not print using command "cat file | lpr"

I have not upgraded anything except to firefox-25.0.1

Rgerads

Hello,

don't know if the following can help you.

On a German installed Salix64 Xfce my Firefox (20.0) is in English language,
the File-menu contains
Page Setup...
Print Preview
Print...

The Page Setup... shows me a little window total in German language.
Two printers are offered in German language, 1. Beliebiger Drucker \n Für portable Dokumente and 2. the printer name for the printer which I installed.
It can not be from Firefox.

The Print Preview dialog is in English.

The Print... dialog is in German again, but the window title is Print in English.
On the first tab two printers are offered. The first printer is called
In Datei drucken. The second is the printer I installed.
The Beliebiger Drucker \n Für ... and In Datei drucken are having the same dialogs.

This is not from Firefox and its not from Cups, because Cups is in English too.
There must be a "helper level" between the applications and Cups, maybe a lib.
I think funktions from this helper level don't get the information to displayed.
Perhaps you have overwritten this helper level when you installed Firefox (25.0.1).

What do you see on the Firefox Page Setup... dialog?


Leafpad and Atril have German menus, but I use the English terms here.

With my Leafpad in German language, I get a German print preview window.

Leafpad does not store the printer name in its .local/leafpad/leafpadrc file. The Print Preview menu line produces PDF files to display it. The PDF file is displayed by Atril.

When I choose the Print... dialog, it is German too and looks like the Atril dialog. The dialog has the same contents and the same printers as in Leafpad (but only two tabs). Perhaps it uses Atril too to print PDF files.


If you use Atril, which printer name is stored in the .config/atril/print-settings file?
The Atril Print... dialog looks like the Leafpad dialog (but six tabs). Atril has no configuration dialog. It get the information from somewhere. Does your Atril print-settings file contain lines like:
printer=FS-1010_Lan (with your printer name, of course)?

A line <Printer FS-1010_Lan> is in the CUPS /etc/cups/printers.conf file. The true name is FS-1010_Lan_FS3 which is also in this file. Could Atril know it from there?


For CUPS itself:
When I open http://localhost:631/admin and choose Tab:Administration -> Botton:Manage Printers my printer is displayed with
Queue Name, Description, Location, Make and Model, Status
What do you see?


From the past I know, that Alis and Asterix used their own printservers, which were responsible to convert the documents ready for the printers. Later than Asterix were renamed to Applixware. Perhaps Applixware were ported to use CUPS. Without porting, an easy way to print an Applixware document could be, to convert the document to PS by an Applixware printserver and send it then to lpr along with the printer name. This would only use low level functions of CUPS. How did you told the printer name to Applixware?

I think, Firefox uses a different, now demaged, way than Leafpad or Applixware, to get the printer informations.

How do you run Applixware on Salix? Which window manager?

Regards

[Atip]

Thanks westms!

Firstly, as far as I can see atril is just a pdf file viewer and has nothing to do with printing.
I removed it now just the same. I seldom use Print Preview. Will see if that stops the bug.

When in my box that Print window pops-up it would show my 2 printers, an Epson and a Brother.
Now it is empty, no printers showing.

That Print window is used by a number of programs such as leafpad, abiword, firefox. medit.

Firefox Page Setup says: Format for: Any Printer, For portable documents. Never looked at it.

My cups Printer page looks just like yours showing my 2 printers since my cups is OK.

Can't remember how I set-up printing in applixware. It offers my 2 printers for choice.

I am using applixware since the last century when I started Linux with RedHat 5.2; it doesn't
matter which window maker, now mainly fluxbox.

Since I have a back-up of /etc I can get my printing back copying it entirely to /. I have not
been able to catch yet at what moment the printing is gone. If I copy only /etc/cups that
Print window stays empty indicating it is not a fault of cups.

[Atip]

I found now the file in /etc which causes the problem. It is ld.so.cache.
I have not yet found why suddenly the Print window is empty. Copying
my back-up file ld.so.cache to /etc lets me immediately print with my
printers which then show-up again in the Print window. That back-up file
was made before this problem occured.

Comments on this weired behavior welcome.

[westms]

I found now the file in /etc which causes the problem. It is ld.so.cache.
I have not yet found why suddenly the Print window is empty. Copying
my back-up file ld.so.cache to /etc lets me immediately print with my
printers which then show-up again in the Print window. That back-up file
was made before this problem occured.

Comments on this weired behavior welcome.

The file /etc/ld.so.cache contains a binary list of librarie files.

This file together with the programs ld.so and ld-linux.so is used to find, load and prepare shared libraries to run programs which need these shared libraries.

Man pages for ld.so, ld-linux.so and ldconfig tell more.

The program ldd lists shared libraries which are needed by a program.
e.g.

Code: Select all

$ whereis firefox
firefox: /usr/bin/firefox /usr/lib64/firefox /usr/X11R6/bin/firefox
         /usr/bin/X11/firefox /usr/X11/bin/firefox
$
$ ldd /usr/bin/firefox
   linux-vdso.so.1 (0x00007fffed3ff000)
   libpthread.so.0 => /lib64/libpthread.so.0 (0x00007fd439303000)
   libdl.so.2 => /lib64/libdl.so.2 (0x00007fd4390ff000)
   libstdc++.so.6 => /usr/lib64/libstdc++.so.6 (0x00007fd438dfd000)
   libm.so.6 => /lib64/libm.so.6 (0x00007fd438b02000)
   libgcc_s.so.1 => /usr/lib64/libgcc_s.so.1 (0x00007fd4388ed000)
   libc.so.6 => /lib64/libc.so.6 (0x00007fd43852c000)
   /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64.so.2 (0x00007fd439537000)
$

[Atip]

Thanks, yes that is all fine and good and known, only it does not
explain why that "Print" window goes blank. Nothing of that sort
in the man ages. I suspect it is in that Print Preview.

In the meantime I made a small script that puts the back-up file
back in its proper place when Print blanks-out.