Debian Lenny: Can't print PDFs.
 

Recently installed Debian Lenny on a machine that formerly ran Debian Etch for 2 years, with no problems. Printing works fine from every program now except for .pdf files. I get a print error and no output from both xpdf and Acrobat. Printer and driver for it are the same I used under Etch (Brother HL-1650). Printer is postscript ready and attached via USB.

I searched this site and others carefully before posting, but apologize if this has already been answered. There was one thread here with no responses that claimed that it had something to do with installing "cups raster driver (gdevcups.c)" but no instructions on doing that. (Plus, I am uncomfortable going outside APT (Debian package system) except as a last resort.

Thanks for any help,

Bit-by-Bit

Have you checked the cups logs /var/log/cups/* for clues? Can you post the exact error message(s)?

Something you may want to consider is whether the cups version in Lenny was upgraded from the version in Etch. I upgraded my cups version manually a while back, pulled out thousands of hairs, and reverted back to the original version. My point being that you may want to downgrade to whatever version Etch has to see if that resolves the issue.

cheers,

Error Messages not helpful . . .
 

Thanks for the input. The error_log at /var/log/cups has a page or two of messages all of the form:

[4/22/09]: CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer: Unauthorized
[4/22/09]: CUPS-Set-Default: Unauthorized

etc.

These references are to the fact that I initialize my printers from the command line rather than within CUPS (and, of course, CUPS always asks me for the root password). However, these "error" messages in no way prevent the system from knowing about my printer or setting it up, as all programs print just fine and have always done so.

As for when I go to print a .pdf file, the limp error message I receive is: "Printer returned error message. Please be sure printer is attached to computer." (Yes, it's attached.)

As for "downgrading" back to Etch, I Would prefer to stay within a single distribution if possible, especially since this doesn't seem to be affecting other users, which makes it seems as if I could be overlooking something stupid . . .

Bit-by-Bit

pdftops.conf + acroread.conf
 

Just surfing for possible solutions on my other machine, which still runs Etch (which I love). Noticed that my Lenny machine has two files, /etc/cups/pdftops.conf and /etc/cups/acroread.conf, neither of which is on my Etch machine. These files seem to be some kind of cups filters for xpdf and acroread respectively.

I tried commenting them out one at a time, rebooting cups, and then printing .pdf files from those two programs, but no luck. Maybe someone has a suggestion for possible modifications to these files that would help, or at least an explanation as to why these weren't needed previously but are now present in Lenny . . .

Bit-by-Bit