Printing from WinXP -> Puppy - Strange Problem [SOLVED]

[jamesbond]

I suspect that mikeb is correct about the SP1 box. Buried somewhere in its registry is information about the Samsung printer that ties it to the old IP, which it keeps wanting to use.

By using a different name for the Samsung printer, you were able to bypass this problem.

No that's not it. I run through the registry and remove anything that has a samsung name in it. And rebooted too to make sure. It didn't change anything. We tried connecting using hostname, IP address, etc. Nothing worked.

The machine that has SP1 also has Samsung driver installed there although it doesn't work. My thinking is, when WinXP tried to add the printer, it sent a query about the printer and found out that it was a Samsung, and thus attempted to pair it with the Samsung driver (which doesn't work). And then instead of saying bad driver or something, it produced a very helpful message of "cannot connect to printer".

The trick that p310don worked because when he first created BrotherSam share, it was a Brother printer (whose driver isn't installed in the machine), so Windows didn't attempt to pair it to an existing driver and displayed a "choose driver" dialog instead (and choose HP Color Laserjet PS). Which worked for the Brother printer.

Then from CUPS we "modify printer" and changed that share name to point to the Samsung printer (but keep the share name of "BrotherSam").

From Windows point of view, nothing changed; as far as it is concerned it thinks that it is still printing to the Brother printer using that HP Color Laserjet PS driver.

But of course now CUPS actually prints to Samsung. Which works.

[jamesbond]

But it failed, and CUPS reported "can't detect file type".

That's exactly the error message that we saw.

If you see this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... st-upgrade it said that CUPS worked before upgrade, and failed after that.

I think it's a bug somewhere in the CUPS printing chain. I didn't spend enough time on this to figure out what's wrong.

I'm inclined to this conclusion because there is similar bugs here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... ug/1718394.

It said the filter failed. But the filter didn't fail using CUPS "print test page". So whatever doing Postscript rasterization isn't doing a good enough job.

So I tried a different driver in XP - "IBM Network printer 24 PS". This one worked!

So the system still works in new CUPS, but you need a more compatible Postscript driver in the XP box.

Curious! That adds weigh to the case of PS rasterisation bug.

As a side note: we're currently building a new Fatdog and the new CUPS have new elements in its rasterisation; mupdf. We haven't tested anything yet (we've got it to boot to desktop but many of the components aren't there yet), so it will be interesting to see what happens.

[rcrsn51]

I notice that some of those examples refer to Gutenprint drivers.

I suspect that some drivers, like the HP Laserjet PS, have lost compatibility with how CUPS detects the format of the incoming job - PS, PDF, binary, etc.

But it's hard to know who's at fault.

[p310don]

I selected "HP Color Laserjet PS" for the driver and printed a test page.

But it failed, and CUPS reported "can't detect file type".

So I tried a different driver in XP - "IBM Network printer 24 PS". This one worked!

So the system still works in new CUPS, but you need a more compatible Postscript driver in the XP box.

For interest's sake, I'll give this a go printing to the Pi's version of the printer and see what happens (it has a later CUPS). I have a couple of days off work, so won't have results for a little bit (unless curiosity gets the better of me and I go into work to check it out on my days off)

[p310don]

Great news. Someone was sick so I had to go to work. Not normally great news, but it gave me a chance to try to IBM Network printer driver to the PI's shared printer. Worked flawlessly first try.

So now the question is for rcrsn51, is it a good idea to change some of your how to's to use that driver rather than the HP Laserjet Color PS?

[rcrsn51]

Great news. Someone was sick so I had to go to work. Not normally great news, but it gave me a chance to try to IBM Network printer driver to the PI's shared printer. Worked flawlessly first try.

Excellent.

So now the question is for rcrsn51, is it a good idea to change some of your how to's to use that driver rather than the HP Laserjet Color PS?

Actually, I removed that info from How to Install your Printer in Puppy a while back.

I don't remember why - possibly because CUPS port 631 shared printing wasn't working the same way anymore and running a p910nd server seemed like a better choice.

Or maybe because the XP method no longer works in Win7. [Edit] I tried to make it work in Win7 and gave up.

But I will add a link to this thread.