MASTER: [Feisty] KDE Printing Manager does not list the PPDs of Gutenprint

[Dominique Eckert]

Binary package hint: cupsys-driver-gutenprint

I have an Epson Stylus DX3850 all-in-one printer, that used to work out-of-the-box since Hoary. I recently made a fresh install of Kubuntu Feisty Beta, and I launched the KDE "Add printer" wizard. The printer was detected as usual, but then, when the driver database was displayed, I couldn't find the correct driver any more.

So I searched the repositories for missing CUPS driver packages, and I found that the foomatic-db-gutenprint package wasn't installed by default (which I think is a problem, because it includes drivers for many Epson printers, and probably many others I don't know about). I installed it and ran the KDE "add printer" wizard again, but then the wizard wouldn't find any driver at all!

Finally, I reinstalled all the packages related to CUPS, including the kdeprint package, with apt-get, and this time, the correct driver was found, and the printer now works. But anyone would agree that this procedure isn't very newbie-friendly, and requires some knowledge of CUPS...

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Mar 31 12:32:10 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.04
Uname: Linux ubuntu-desktop 2.6.20-13-generic #2 SMP Sun Mar 25 00:21:25 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Can you check whether the package cupsys-driver-gutenprint is installed (do "dpkg -l cupsys*").

[Dominique Eckert (dom-eckert)]

Yes, the package was installed. Only foomatic-db-gutenprint wasn't installed.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

I get

till@till-laptop:~$ lpinfo -m | grep -i "Epson Stylus DX3850"
gutenprint/Epson/Epson-Stylus_DX3850-gutenprint.5.0-en.ppd.gz Epson Stylus DX3850 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.0.99.1
gutenprint/Epson/Epson-Stylus_DX3850-gutenprint.5.0.sim-en.ppd.gz Epson Stylus DX3850 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.0.99.1 Simplified
foomatic:Epson-Stylus_DX3850-gutenprint-ijs-simplified.5.0.ppd Epson Stylus DX3850 Foomatic/gutenprint-ijs-simplified.5.0
foomatic:Epson-Stylus_DX3850-gutenprint-ijs.5.0.ppd Epson Stylus DX3850 Foomatic/gutenprint-ijs.5.0
till@till-laptop:~$

and have both cupsys-driver-gutenprint and foomatic-db-gutenprint installed. With only cupsys-driver-gutenprint installed you should get at least:

till@till-laptop:~$ lpinfo -m | grep -i "Epson Stylus DX3850"
gutenprint/Epson/Epson-Stylus_DX3850-gutenprint.5.0-en.ppd.gz Epson Stylus DX3850 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.0.99.1
gutenprint/Epson/Epson-Stylus_DX3850-gutenprint.5.0.sim-en.ppd.gz Epson Stylus DX3850 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.0.99.1 Simplified
till@till-laptop:~$

The output of "lpinfo -m" is exactly what the printer setup tools list. At least the CUPS web interface, gnome-cups-manager, and KDE Printing Manager should do so.

Can you do the command

lpinfo -m | grep -i "Epson Stylus DX3850"

on your machine?

[Dominique Eckert (dom-eckert)]

I'm now running the Live

[Dominique Eckert (dom-eckert)]

Sorry for the latest message.

I'm now running the LiveCD to check if it is the case on the default system, where only cupsys-driver-gutenprint is installed. The driver indeed seems to be present:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ lpinfo -m | grep -i "Epson Stylus DX3850"
gutenprint.5.0://escp2-dx3850/expert/C Epson Stylus DX3850 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.0.99.1
gutenprint.5.0://escp2-dx3850/simple/C Epson Stylus DX3850 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.0.99.1 Simplified

but the KDE "add printer" wizard still doesn't find it. So it might be a problem in the kdeprint package. I send you here a screenshot of the list of Epson Stylus drivers in the KDE "add printer" wizard. Many printers are not there.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

It seems that the KDE Printing Manager does not like the PPD URIs which do not end with ".ppd". This needs a patch in the KDE Printing Manager.

Assigning bug to KDE Print.

[Dominique Eckert (dom-eckert)]

Unfortunately, the bug was not fixed in the final release.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Can you uninstall the package cupsys-driver-gutenprint via the command

sudo dpkg -r --force-depends cupsys-driver-gutenprint

and then do

sudo apt-get install lsb
wget http://openprinting.org/download/printdriver/RPMS/i486/gutenprint-5.0.0.99.1-2lsb3.1.i486.rpm
sudo alien --scrpts gutenprint-5.0.0.99.1-2lsb3.1.i486.rpm
sudo dpkg -i gutenprint_5.0.0.99.1-3_i386.deb

Then you will have the OpenPrinting version of Gutenprint (distribution-independent driver package). This one has PPD URLs which end in .ppd.gz:

till@till-laptop:~$ lpinfo -m | grep -i "Epson Stylus DX3850"
gutenprint/Epson/Epson-Stylus_DX3850-gutenprint.5.0-en.ppd.gz Epson Stylus DX3850 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.0.99.1
gutenprint/Epson/Epson-Stylus_DX3850-gutenprint.5.0.sim-en.ppd.gz Epson Stylus DX3850 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.0.0.99.1 Simplified
till@till-laptop:~$

Try to start the KDE Printing Manager now and see whether the PPDs/printer entries appear now. If this is the case there is really a bug in the KDE Printing Manager. This should be reported upstream to both KDE (for a fix) and Gutenprint (for a workaround).

[Dominique Eckert (dom-eckert)]

Hi,

I've tried this on the LiveCD (because I'v done many things on my installed system, see my first message here). It doesn't work, event after doing "sudo dpkg-reconfigure kdeprint". I still get the same list of drivers, that doesn't include all Epson Stylus C/CX/DX printers.

I've done everything on the Desktop CD of Kubuntu 7.04, so it should be easily reproducible.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

So the problem seems to be somewhere in the KDE Printing Manager that it does not list all PPDs which CUPS 1.2.x lists. There is no problem with Gutenprint or the Ubuntu or OpenPrinting packaging of Gutenprint.

Closing Gutenprint task.

[7penselen (zienszo)]

I have a Epson Stylus Photo R220 and my printer has always worked well under Linux and I couldn't find it in the printer KDE Printing Manager

Finally I as an ex-slackware user I know about configuring CUPS with "http://localhost:631/" and I install it via my browser and after it I find it in the KDE Printing Manager and it works.

I think this bug must be fixed, the workaround of "http://localhost:631/" must be published as long there is no suitable fix and I think this bug is quite irritating, when you have this printers. Especially when someone has no Linux experience.

[Zebidiah (zebidiah)]

On Sunday 29 April 2007 14:45, 7penselen wrote:
> I have a Epson Stylus Photo R220 and my printer has always worked
> well under Linux and I couldn't find it in the printer KDE Printing
> Manager
>
> Finally I as an ex-slackware user I know about configuring CUPS with
> "http://localhost:631/" and I install it via my browser and after it
> I find it in the KDE Printing Manager and it works.
>
> I think this bug must be fixed, the workaround of
> "http://localhost:631/" must be published as long there is no
> suitable fix and I think this bug is quite irritating, when you have
> this printers. Especially when someone has no Linux experience.

Thanks for that bit of information. While I new of http://localhost:631
(though never used it) I didn't think it would offer any other way of
adding a printer to which the drivers were not in the distribution. I
will give this a try.

  Zebidiah

[Zebidiah (zebidiah)]

On Sunday 29 April 2007 14:45:48 7penselen wrote:
> I have a Epson Stylus Photo R220 and my printer has always worked
> well under Linux and I couldn't find it in the printer KDE Printing
> Manager
>
> Finally I as an ex-slackware user I know about configuring CUPS with
> "http://localhost:631/" and I install it via my browser and after it
> I find it in the KDE Printing Manager and it works.
>
> I think this bug must be fixed, the workaround of
> "http://localhost:631/" must be published as long there is no
> suitable fix and I think this bug is quite irritating, when you have
> this printers. Especially when someone has no Linux experience.

This is to confirm that I have set up Feisty using CUPS with an Epson
Stylus Photo R220. The printer is networked and shared with 4 Windows
XP PCs. I think I actually prefer administering the printer this way.

  Zebidiah

[Pascal De Vuyst (pascal-devuyst)]

Comment from Till Kamppeter in bug #111320
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cupsys/+bug/111320/comments/14

> The KDE Printing Manager does not list the PPDs of Gutenprint
> 5.0.0.99.1 neither the auto-generated ones of Feisty's Gutenprint
> package nor the static (ready-made) ones of the distribution-independent
> LSB Gutenprint 5.0.0.99.1 package from OpenPrinting. This meaans there
> must be a bug in the KDE Printing Manager.

[Marco Cimmino (cimmo)]

Confirmed also for me with Feisty final:
ALL the Canon Pixma IP aren't listed, they are a lot of printers, this bug is very serious because all people that doesn't know how to install via localhost:631 they finish to give up installing their printer.

[Pascal De Vuyst (pascal-devuyst)]

Increasing importance to High

[John Cottier (john-cottier)]

I have a similar problem with my Espon Stylus Photo 895. I have used for years on Mandrake/Mandriva so I was surprised when Kubuntu did not list it. I use the nearest model, 870 and that at least worked. I then installed ubuntu-desktop and logged into that. The gnome print manager auto detected and intalled the correct driver, but it would not work. The print job would start and then stop on an unknown error. Logging back into KDE was the same. Deleting the driver and putting the 870 back in worked again.

I also tried installing the gutenprint driver and installed using alien, as they recommended for ubuntu. But it is still not shown on the list in KDE print manager. It seems as though the gnome and KDE print systems are not integrated and maybe conflict somewhere.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

You are saying

- the installation instructions at OpenPrinting (your link) are not very clear.

What was not clear? What should I add/change?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Sorry for the last comment, it was ment for another bug report.

[Pascal De Vuyst (pascal-devuyst)]

@John Cottier
> The gnome print manager auto detected and intalled the correct driver, but it would not work.
> The print job would start and then stop on an unknown error.
> Logging back into KDE was the same.

This looks like a regression in gutenprint 5.0.0.99.1 for your specific printer: Epson Stylus Photo 895. Please open a new bug for this issue to avoid adding unrelated information into this bug report.
Can you install your printer again in GNOME and attach the output of the printingbug info script and the CUPS error log in the new bug report as described here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems. This will give us more information about the unknown error you are getting.

Please also attach the output of the printingbug info script with the 870 driver installed, so we know the exact driver you are using at this moment without problems.

[Ultracap (ultracap)]

I too could not install a Canon Pixma (MP150) using the KDE print wizard.
I'm running Kubuntu Feisty and have the cupsys-driver-gutenprint package installed but not the foomatic-db-gutenprint.

I managed to get the printer set up using the local host suggestion above. The printer is now showing as installed in the KDE printer settings.

I had a look at some of the KDE bugs, the closest I could find was 142220 (http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142220).

Does this look like the same problem?

I believe KDE 3.5.7 is scheduled for release on 07/05/22, I mention this in case its possible to get a fix in.

[Marco Cimmino (cimmo)]

great Ultracap, the bug is closed as worksforme by Andreas Koch saying that is a problem in the flag -O3 used to compile kdeprint, but really I don't know if this is true.
Can be possible to know by the responsible of this bug that is still unassigned :(

[John Cottier (john-cottier)]

OK thanks. I was not convinced that this bug was not related to both
issues so I thought it better to include both in the same bug report.

Pascal De Vuyst wrote:
> @John Cottier
>
>> The gnome print manager auto detected and intalled the correct driver, but it would not work.
>> The print job would start and then stop on an unknown error.
>> Logging back into KDE was the same.
>>
>
> This looks like a regression in gutenprint 5.0.0.99.1 for your specific printer: Epson Stylus Photo 895. Please open a new bug for this issue to avoid adding unrelated information into this bug report.
> Can you install your printer again in GNOME and attach the output of the printingbug info script and the CUPS error log in the new bug report as described here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems. This will give us more information about the unknown error you are getting.
>
> Please also attach the output of the printingbug info script with the
> 870 driver installed, so we know the exact driver you are using at this
> moment without problems.
>
>

[James Payne (james-sonifex)]

I overcame this by just installling the foomatic-db-gutenprint package my printer than appeared in the kprint dialog as normal. Perhaps not the ideal solution but it works for me.

[Marco Cimmino (cimmo)]

Not for me, installing foomatic-db-gutenprint didn't make all Canon Pixma series to appear, see this screenshot and the next one.

[Marco Cimmino (cimmo)]

all Canon Pixma family are missing!

[Miguel Tadeu (mtadeunet)]

Same problem here...

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

karlrhs tells in bug 52581 that this problem does not occur on other distros, probably the other distros have individually patched the KDE Printing Manager and not submitted the patch upstream or they use other printer setup tools by default. In the former case we should take the patches from the other distros, in the latter case Kubuntu should use system-config-printer and hal-cups-utils by default. I hope this bug is urgent enough to get it fixed in Gutsy.

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

Till,

You've marked this bug for the gutsy RC milestone, but I don't see that anyone has reported this behavior with gutsy, only feisty?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

See the last two bugs in the list of duplicates: Bug #144283 and bug #148748.

[Marco Cimmino (cimmo)]

Steve confirmed on a Gutsy full updated up to 4th of Oct 2007

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

My suggestion for a workaround in Gutsy is the following:

1. DO NOT add foomatic-db-gutenprint
2. DO NOT patch KDE Printing Manager
3. Instead, add system-config-printer and hal-cups-utils
4. Modify menu entries that users use preferably system-config-printer and not KDE Printing Manager
5. (Optional) Move KDE Printing Manager into a separate binary package and do not seed it (will make some space for 3.)

This works around that KDE Printing Manager is totally outdated, not only with finding and selecting PPDs, but also with CUPS server configuration and other things. It also adds Plug'n'Print (automatic print queue setup) to Kubuntu. Note that the system trays of both KDE and GNOME are compatible to each other, so the tray notification functionality of system-config-printer and hal-cups-utils (both GTK-based) should also work with KDE.

[Jonathan Riddell (jr)]

Adding the Gnome tools to Kubuntu isn't an option since we don't ship Gnome apps in Kubuntu. However I would like to look at making KDE frontends to these for Hardy.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Jonathan, what do you think is the better solution? Adding foomatic-db-gutenprint would introduce confusing duplicates in the web interface (on could perhaps remove cupsys-driver-gutenprint then). Another problem will be that Ubuntu and Kubuntu users will use different types of Gutenprint which can lead to different bugs. Patching KDE Printing Manager would be the most elegant solution, but so shortly before release it is probably not very easy.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Have you already tried how GNOMEy system-config-printer and hal-cups-utils are? Do a fresh Kubuntu standard CD installation and "sudo apt-get install hal-cups-utils system-config-printer". Which packages and how many MB get pulled in by dependencies. If the amount is low, these are only GTK and not GNOME apps and they could go into Kubuntu, especially when removing the KDE Printing Manager.

[Alexandre Brouet (alexandre-brouet)]

@Riddell : would you really like to have another release of Kubuntu not supporting many users' printers in the world, just because it shoudn't have some gtk stuff in it ? I think priority was that Kubuntu works.
I am using Kubuntu since one year and a half, but I'm considering moving to Ubuntu, seeing that Kubuntu is and apprently will always be a second-class citizen before its sister...

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Easiest solution for Gutsy (workaround, not fix!!) is adding foomatic-db-gutenprint and ijsgutenprint to the Kubuntu seeds and removing cupsys-driver-gutenprint from the Kubuntu seeds. This way the IJS driver with Foomatic XML data (supported by KDE Printing Manager) and not the CUPS raster driver with on-the-fly PPD generator (not supported by KDE Printing Manager) will be used.

This should be done only in Kubuntu, not in Ubuntu/Xubuntu/Edubuntu, as it is only to work around the problem of the KDE Printing Manager. The non-Kubuntu editions should stay with cupsys-driver-gutenprint as thiis Gutenprint frontend integrates better with CUPS and needs less disk space in an installed system.

[Marco Cimmino (cimmo)]

well in my comment on 2007-05-12 I said that probably there is a easiest way without changing kubuntu-meta at all, but all ignored me :(

[Marco Cimmino (cimmo)]

I report again the solution:

from comment #9 in http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=142220

Cimmo,

in our case, the optimization level definitely made the difference. On the new system described above, switching from -O3 to -O2 removed the error. Our older systems, which were compiled with -O2 right from the start, never showed the symptoms at all. So, at least in the case of the HP and Lexmark PPDs I used, KDEPrint itself seems innocent.

It is of course possible that other, actual errors show up for other PPDs, such as the Canon PPDs you mention. In that case, you should open a new bug report here (with a possible link to this report) and attach your PPDs.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Cimmo, for Gutenprint it is really different. The cupsys-driver-gutenprint package does not ship any PPDs but a much smaller PPD generator. This generator is invoked by CUPS if a client asks CUPS for PPD listings or PPDs. The KDE Printing Manager does not ask CUPS for PPDs. It searches by itself in the file system and also browses Foomatic XML files. So it does not find PPDs for cupsys-driver-gutenprint. Therefore the suggestion by Jonathan and me to replace cupsys-driver-gutenprint by foomatic-db-gutenprint and ijsgutenprint.

The change of the optimization level can be done independently to fix the other, independent PPD listing problem.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Cimmo, if you want your problem fixed in Kubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy), please file a bug here on Launchpad, mark it "Critical" and set the milestone to 7.10 Gutsy RC.

[mmxbass (mmxbass)]

I always add foomatic-db-gutenprint to Kubuntu machines I build for people and it has always (in my experience) been a decision for the better.

[Marco Cimmino (cimmo)]

Till sorry tought that bug was related to this, probably not.

[Michael (michaeljt)]

I observed this problem yesterday in Kubuntu Gutsy, upgraded from Feisty. cupsys-driver-gutenprint, foomatic-db-gutenprint and ijsgutenprint are all installed. Should the first one not be, and should I uninstall it manually?

[Marco Cimmino (cimmo)]

Michael which printer?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Having cupsys-driver-gutenprint or not has no influence on the KDE Printing Manager, especially adding a package will not make printer entries disappear and removing it reappear again. The desired printer entries should be available and working as soon as both foomatic-db-gutenprint and ijsgutenprint are on your system.