Failed to print document / Too many failed attempts

[Marco Agudelo]

When I try to print file pdf that is the error:

"Failed to print document / Too many failed attempts"

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 8.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/evince
NonfreeKernelModules: ath_hal
Package: evince 2.24.1-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: evince
Uname: Linux 2.6.27-11-generic i686

[Dimitrios Symeonidis (azimout)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu even better! It would be quite helpful if you attach the document you are having a problem with so we can better recreate this bug and work on fixing it. Thanks in advance.

[vocx (eliudcabrera)]

Description:
When trying to print a PDF document with "evince" sometimes a dialog appears with the message
    "Failed to print document
     Too many attempts"

and the document doesn't print any page at all.

While the messages "Printing job...", "Printing page..." and "Finishing..." are displayed at the top of the page, the evince process consumes most CPU cycles.

The bug doesn't show a consistent behavior in that sometimes the entire document may print fine, and other times it may fail to print a single page.

The bug occurred with many different PDF documents, being 5 to 20 pages long, and 200 kB to 3 MB in size, but it also shows with smaller documents.

These PDFs were generated with LaTeX:
    bug_evince_print_CMSS12_Type1.pdf (13 KB)
    bug_evince_print_NimbusSansL-Regu_Type1 (14.1 KB)
    bug_evince_print_Noname_Type3.pdf (17.9 KB)

With PDFs having Type 1 fonts it doesn't seem to fail.

With the other one it took half a minute and sometimes it would print, and sometimes it would display the "Failed to print document" dialog. The System Monitor shows heavy usage of "gs" (ghostscript) in this instance.

The "Manage Print Jobs" application in Applications > Accessories shows that those jobs with Type 1 fonts have a size comparable with the actual file size, that is, with the example documents provided, they are around 35 kB. With the Type 3 document the size was 4024 kB. Other documents I printed showed jobs as big as 8450 kB.

I encountered this bug only while printing from "evince".

I tried printing from "okular", and it never gave any problem.

My printer: HP Laser Jet 1015

Ubuntu 9.04

texlive: 2007.dfsg.1-5
evince: 2.26.1-0ubuntu1
okular: 4:4.2.2-0ubuntu2

[Sb (sb56637)]

Workaround here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/359975/comments/30