Banner pages broken in Cups 1.5.3

[George Bobeck]

1) The release of Ubuntun used:
Description: Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS
Release: 12.04

2) The version of the package
# apt-cache policy cups
cups:
  Installed: 1.5.3-0ubuntu6

3) Expected behavior:

I attempted to configure my local printer to use the the "confidential" CUPS banner page through the web based gui. I have included a snippet of the /etc/cups/printers.conf file to show that the change was applied corectly.

snippet from /etc/cups/printers.conf
...
</Printer>
<Printer ITG-1320>
Info Color Printer
Location Printer Room
DeviceURI lpd://PRINTSERVER/ITG-1320
State Idle
StateTime 1308899498
Accepting Yes
Shared Yes
JobSheets confidential none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
OpPolicy default
ErrorPolicy stop-printer
</Printer>
...

When I print a test page I get a blank template page (see attached jpeg) followed by the correct ubuntu modified cups test page.

I get the same output (once again, see the attached jpeg) for any banner page selected and applied.

I have even attempted to replace the contents of /usr/share/data/confidential with the following:

#CUPS-BANNER
Show job-id job-name job-originating-user-name job-originating-host-name job-billing
Header Confidential
Footer Confidential

however I still get the blank template page.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Bruce Tarro (cydizen)]

The banner templates in /usr/share/cups/banners/* are ignoring the plain text output that should be available according to the CUPS banner spec[1]. Confirmed in Raring & Saucy tests.

WORKAROUND:

a) Create a PDF with the banner information you'd like
b) save the PDF file to /usr/share/cups/data/
c) edit the corresponding banner file to call your new PDF.
**NOTE** the "show" references in the banner file WILL overlay so you can keep them if you wish.

Example:
$ cat secret
#PDF-BANNER
Template notsecret.pdf
Show printer-name printer-info printer-location printer-make-and-model printer-driver-name printer-driver-version paper-size imageable-area job-id options time-at-creation time-at-processing

[1] - [1] http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/doc-1.6/spec-banner.html?VERSION=1.6&Q=

[George Bobeck (george-bobeck)]

1.) More background information:

Just for the record, when I configured cup to print directly to a printer instead of to a queue on a windows print server, I still get the same output.

Once again, another snipped from /etc/cups/printers.conf

snippet from /etc/cups/printers.conf
...
</Printer>
<Printer 927-8200>
Info Color Printer
Location Printer Room
DeviceURI lpd://927-8200/
State Idle
StateTime 1308899498
Accepting Yes
Shared Yes
JobSheets confidential none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
OpPolicy default
ErrorPolicy stop-printer
</Printer>
...

I also tried using the banner pages from Cups 1.7.1 (source) as well as copying them from my existing cups 1.3.7 deployment (Redhat 5.4). Neither of those ideas worked. I can attach copies of banner pages from either, if required.

2. ) Bruce's Workaround
Bruce's workaround worked perfectly for me.

[tlc (tlc)]

Getting these blank banners on 14.04.

[tlc (tlc)]

Regarding the workaround, "a) Create a PDF with the banner information you'd like".

How does one create a PDF that is a template?
So that things like job-originating-user-name will be filled in?

[George Bobeck (george-bobeck)]

This issue is still present in Ubuntu 14.04 with Cups 1.7.2.

[Bruce Tarro (cydizen)]

Fixed in 15.10 (cups 2.0+); Not sure what the fix was between versions; worth SRU for Precise & Trusty