I installed a new printer today and it was working great. Then, instead of printing the file requested, it appears that it is converting it to a .pdf file AND printing that as though it were a text file.

I uninstalled cups and the printer drivers, rebooted and reinstalled them. Same problem.

The printer is a Brother HL-2270 monochrome laser printer.
It is connected to the computer via USB cable.

My OS is PClinuxOS Full Monty up to date.

About my computer:
AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
nVidia Corp GF108 [EVGA GeForce GT 430]
2GB 160ns memory
Samsung HD160JJ hard drive
LQ DVD writer
Acer x223w lcd monitor

I have tried poking around in localhost:631 with no success.
I have tried poking around in the PClinuxOS printing configuration tool with no success.

Many thanks in advance to anyone who can help me as I am desperate.

-X

Do you mean it was working, that you could actually print a text or other file and then something changed and you are no longer able to?
If you open a text file, click File then Print, do you see a window which shows the Name of your printer? Do you have an option print to file, print to pdf?

What do you see when you open the PCLinux Control Center, Hardware, Configure Printing and Scanning? Is your printer showing up? or is it not recognized?

That is correct. I printed 3 years of back 1040 forms in .pdf format and they came out great. Then I printed an image file and it is good.

I do see the printer name, and there's a bar below that with the file name and .pdf extension that appears to be grayed out. I can't alter it or make it go away.

No, those options are not there. I've looked for them.

It says "HL2270DW" which is correct.

I'm considering reinstalling the OS except not the Full version, in order to start with a clean slate.

-X

I may have neglected to mention that I downloaded the printer driver and cups file from the Brother website.

-X

FYI this printer also uses PCL 6 emulation so you can try to see what happens if you switch to using the HP 6 or other PCL 6 driver that might already be installed.

What type of image file were you trying to print?
Does the CUPS printer test page print successfully.
What type of image file were you trying to print?

I'm very in the dark as to how to try these drivers. Can you help me out here. I'm willing to try anything at this point.

It was either .jpg or .tif and I was printing from Kolourpaint. It worked fine and later things went to pot.

I'll have to try it.

I reinstalled PCLinuxOS 02.02.2012 KDE but not the FM version this time. Then I installed the cups rpm for this printer and the other driver that were on the Brother website. It is printing the same garbage text. Found out it was set to A4 paper so I changed that. Still garbage.

At this point I'm guessing the driver is bad. I'll try to figure out how to do the HP 6 driver but will check back here shortly. Thanks kindly for the assistance.

I'm trying to add a printer through localhost:631 (cups). Not sure how to fill in the boxes so I'll guess for now.

I got it to print a good test page so progress is being made.

Should be straight forward.
Post back if you are confused.

Just select HP 6 when you get to the point where CUPS asks for make and model.

It was a bit more involved than that but...I somehow figured it out and got this:

Description: HP6
Location: /dev/usb/lp0
Driver: HP LaserJet 6 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.7 (grayscale, 2-sided printing)
Connection: usb:/dev/usb/lp0
Defaults: job-sheets=none, none media=na_letter_8.5x11in sides=one-sided

Thanks for the tip.

Now, I found some people using Gentoo and Arch having the same problem I'm having. Here are some links for anyone wanting to learn more and possibly solve a similar problem.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=113962
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-6636061.html

I FIXED IT! Here's the fix:

At about line 38, Add to the following lines to /usr/local/Brother/Printer/HL2270DW/lpd/filterHL2270DW:

# This is a Hack until the "file" command gets fixed

if [ `head -1 $INPUT_TEMP1 | grep "%!PS"` ] ; then
FILE_TYPE="PostScript"

fi


I put it right after the line that says:
Code:

FILE_TYPE=`file $INPUT_TEMP1 | sed -e 's/^.*:[ ]*//' -e 's/[ ].*//'`

Trying to update the title.

This has been a good printer and I recently had to add it to a fresh install of PCLinuxOS.

I installed the drivers for it, an HL2270DL.
It went well and everything looked as it should but the printer would not print.
The print jobs were sent but were pending.

It took me hours to find the problem.
The computer was looking for it on usb:/dev/usb/lp0 but the
printer was actually to be found on usb://Brother/HL-2270DW%20series

Sometimes little things can sure be a pain, but it is printing like a champ now with a new toner cartridge installed too.