cups-pdf doesn't print pages containing images

After careful examination, it appears that 3 superfluous lines in the PPD were added by the "PDF Workflow" patch that was used for 2.5.0 releases, but has been removed since CUPS-PDF 2.5.1. However, the PPD was not automatically upgraded by our package's maintainer script, which is probably what broke things for people upgrading to a 2.5.1 release. This has been fixed as of CUPS-PDF 2.5.1-4 which entered Oneiric today, by utilizing a feature of CUPS 1.5.0-3 and more recent to auto-update PPD files whenever a new version gets installed.

As a crude test, for older releases, could you try purging and re-installing the package and see if it fixes it?

sudo dpkg -P cups-pdf && sudo apt-get install cups-pdf

This does not help --- we're in need of a new package for all supported releases:
- 1104
- 1010
- 1004 lts

hopefully this isn't too difficult ...!

BTW: what are the superfluous lines and where do they occur? Maybe we're able to remove them by hand if we have some step by step guide?

The above Debian bug has the details.

Please note that only 2.5.1 releases from 2.5.1-1 to 2.5.1-3 should be affected. Older and newer releases should be fine.

For Ubuntu 11.04 only the affected release is available. It needs to be fixed, really!

latest available version: cups-pdf-2.5.1-2

I'm affraid that for releases older that Oneiric, there isn't any answer other than purging and re-installing the package:

sudo dpkg -P cups-pdf && sudo apt-get install cups-pdf

This is the only way to ensure that we always have the latest PPD installed for older releases. Happily, starting with Oneiric, we make use of a new feature in CUPS to automatically update the PPD at install time. Unless this new CUPS feature can be backported, I see no easy solution other than manually purging and re-installing as above.

Martin-Éric, there is a solution for making cups-pdf auto-updating PPDs in distributions older than Oneiric. All printer driver packages in Natty and older contain the full PPD update code in their *.postinst script. Simply copy this code into the cups-pdf.postinst and adapt the lines setting the variables driverregexp and gennicknameregexp.

An example postinst script is

/var/lib/dpkg/info/pxljr.postinst

from the pxljr package.

Till, thanks for this tip. This would only be needed for Natty, since Oneiric already has a package that uses the facilities provided by CUPS 1.5.0-3 so it should be possible for me to push an update only for Natty, for those updating from Maverick or older.

Pushed a patched version into natty-proposed. Waiting for approval.

Martin-Éric, does the version which you pushed into natty-proposed also address bug 805947? Could you make a new one containing also the wait loop and the cupsenable/cupsaccept which I suggested in bug 805947?

See bug #805947 for that part.

Uploaded for Natty-proposed.

Still waiting on the approval of 2.5.11-3~natty3 for natty-proposed.

öö... 2.5.1-3~natty3 for natty-proposed.

The PPD update (tested under Oneiric) does not work for me. the file

/usr/share/cups/ppd-updaters/cups-pdf

must contain

DRIVER_REGEXP='^lsb/usr/cups-pdf/'
GENNICKNAME_REGEXP=

So thet the DRIVER_REGEXP matches the output of "lpinfo -m | grep cups-pdf":

lsb/usr/cups-pdf/CUPS-PDF.ppd Generic CUPS-PDF Printer

Check also the driver regexp variable in the postinstall script for Natty.

This bug was fixed in the package cups-pdf - 2.5.1-6

---------------
cups-pdf (2.5.1-6) unstable; urgency=low

  * Corrected DRIVER_REGEXP value for automated PPD updating. (LP: #836278)
    Thanks to Till Kamppeter for spotting this!
 -- Martin-Eric Racine <email address hidden> Wed, 14 Sep 2011 18:39:09 +0300

Works now in Oneiric, thank you for the quick fix.

I have reviewed the debdiff for the version uploaded to natty-proposed and the PPD auto update is correct there. Please approve this package.

There are now two cups-pdf uploads in the unapproved queue; ~natty2 and ~natty3.

~natty3 appears to contain the changes from ~natty2, but the changes file doesn't contain both revisions.

I've rejected both from the unapproved queue. Could you please upload a package versioned ~natty2 with the ~natty2 and ~natty3 changelogs folded into a single entry?

Alternatively you could re-upload the existing ~natty3 package but with the changes file containing both ~natty2 and ~natty3 changelog entries. However, since ~natty2 has never been released into an archive I'd prefer it to be versioned just ~natty2.

Hello Thomas, or anyone else affected,

Accepted cups-pdf into natty-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

Looks like it is working again --- for Thunderbird. I'll test some other applications ...

OK for chrome, Firefox, Opera, LibreOffice (sometimes I have to print twice, to have it printed once).

Looks fixed for me!

Colours are not printed in all cases --- sometimes printings are converted to black and white. Could not find any rule this is done. Seems random!

Please open a new bug about the color->b&w issue.

Meanwhile, we'll mark this blank page issue as fixed.

SRU team: cups-pdf for natty-proposed is verified.

This bug was fixed in the package cups-pdf - 2.5.1-3~natty2

---------------
cups-pdf (2.5.1-3~natty2) natty-proposed; urgency=medium

  * Added a step in [postinst] to ensure that CUPS has successfully reloaded.
  * Added 'cupsenable' and 'cupsaccept' steps in [postinst] to ensure that
    the PDF queue is up and running before we can manipulate it. (LP: #805947)
  * Borrowed PPD upgrading code from "pxljr" to recover from upgrades
    from 2.5.0 releases (LP: #836278). Thanks to Till Kamppeter.
    NOTE: not needed for releases before or after Natty.
 -- Martin-Eric Racine <email address hidden> Thu, 22 Sep 2011 06:35:04 +0300

Works now.

Thomas, could you confirm which version fixed it?

ii bluez-cups 4.96-0ubuntu4 Bluetooth printer driver for CUPS
ii cups 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - server
ii cups-bsd 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - BSD commands
ii cups-client 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - client programs (SysV)
ii cups-common 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - common files
ii cups-driver-gutenprint 5.2.7-2ubuntu4 printer drivers for CUPS
ii cups-pdf 2.5.1-7 PDF writer backend for CUPS
ii cups-pk-helper 0.1.2-1 PolicyKit helper to configure cups with fine-grained privileges
ii cups-ppdc 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - PPD manipulation utilities
ii ghostscript-cups 9.04~dfsg-0ubuntu11 interpreter for the PostScript language and for PDF - CUPS filters
ii hplip-cups 3.11.7-1ubuntu3 HP Linux Printing and Imaging - CUPS Raster driver (hpcups)
ii libcups2 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Core library
ii libcups2:i386 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Core library
ii libcupscgi1 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - CGI library
ii libcupsdriver1 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Driver library
ii libcupsimage2 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Raster image library
ii libcupsimage2:i386 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Raster image library
ii libcupsmime1 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - MIME library
ii libcupsppdc1 1.5.0-8ubuntu3 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - PPD manipulation library
ii python-cups 1.9.59-0ubuntu0.1 Python bindings for CUPS
ii python-cupshelpers 1.3.6+20110831-0ubuntu9.2 Python modules for printer configuration with CUPS

as found on oneiric after updating to the latest packages --- I had to reinstall the whole system after an upgrade (11.04 -> 11.10) going haywire :-( . But it worked just before the reinstall.