Hello. I recently installed an HPDeskJet using CUPS. The test page printed out great! Everything prints out perfectly from Mozilla and all the text editors like Kate and KWrite etc.

Sometimes when am doing my thing in the shell I like to quickly print out a certain .conf file to get a better look at it. When I use the lp or lpr commands,(E.G. lp httpd.conf or lpr httpd.conf) the files print out with letters chopped off. The first two or three letters of each line are gone and the first few lines on the top of the file are chopped off as well.

Its not really a big deal since I can just open up an editor and print it from there but I would like the convenience of doing it from the shell if possible. Am I missing a certain flag in the lp command or is this something else?

You have the specify the prinetr filter to use. Say if my printer name i insatlled with cups/apsfiletr is Epson-high-quality, i would issue:
$ lpr -P Epson-high-quality <filename>
And it should work fine as long as the printer specified is in /etc/printcap. At least it's like this with APSfilter/lpr, i dont use CUPS but i assume it would be the same. Or alternatevily you can try to "low-level" way
$ cat <filename> > /dev/printer or /dev/lp0 depending if the symlinks are correctly in place...
HTH
-NSKL

Well my printer name is HP-DeskJet-3820 so I tried

lpr -P HP-DeskJet-3820 test.txt

and it didn't work. Checking the /etc/printcap file shows a

HP-DeskJet-3820:

entry. The last bit about cat test.txt > /dev/lp0 just locks up the printer. No dice!

Hmm.. Maybe CUPS doesn't use the "usual" lpr -P thing... I never used it so i'm not much help now... but try to read some CUPS docs, maybe you need to do something like cups -P printername <filename>. I have no idea...
Sorry
-NSKL

Thanks anyway. Maybe I can send the file to an editor such as kate and then have kate print it. Can this all be done from a shell?

When you give a filename as a parameter to kate at the command-line the file will open, but I'm not sure how you would tie that in to printing.

What do you mean ". . .it didn't work"? Did it not print anything,
or did it print the same stairstep as usual?

How are you setting up the CUPS config file? are you using a
GUI, a web browser, or a text editor?
Post the entry about your printer from /etc/printcap, as well as the
entry from /etc/cups/printers.conf.

The lpr syntax is the same. . .

By saying it didn't work I meant it prints the same stairstep as usual. I am setting up CUPS through the web browser. As I said in my original post everything else prints fine except lp or lpr from a shell.

There is only one line in the /etc/printcap file and it is:

HP-DeskJet-3829:

Here is printers.conf:

# Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.1.18
# Written by cupsd on Sun 26 Jan 2003 04:11:54 PM GMT
<DefaultPrinter HP-DeskJet-3820>
Info HP-DeskJet-3820
Location The-Alter
DeviceURI parallel:/dev/lp0
State Idle
Accepting Yes
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</Printer>

Shouldn't there be more in the /etc/printcap file?

No. CUPS does things a little differently.

Where did you get the PPD for the printer?

linuxprinting.org

Found a solution.

enscript test.txt

Prints perfectly.