Problem printing custom page sizes with lp after upgrading to 12.04

[Pavneet Arora]

I have a workflow generating PDFs using LaTeX and ConTeXt on custom pages sizes. For instance I will print index cards, personal and corporate cheques, etc. The printers in question (right now) are a Brother HL-5370DW and a Brother MFC-6490CW, but in the past have been various HP laser printers.

 This workflow has been stable through several recent versions of Ubuntu. Upon upgrading to 12.04, the workflow has broken for me.

Initially, I reported this to Linux Support at Brother, but they have thrown it back saying that it isn't their issue. For instance, on initial upgrade I faced this issue:

http://welcome.solutions.brother.com/bsc/public_s/id/linux/en/faq_prn.html#f00110

However, this was resolved on my installation by updating my installation. I was using Avery labels and printing them via an MS-Office document from within LibreOffice. This had worked for years.

I am enclosing with this report a (sample) personal cheque, and because I am only allowed a single attachment, in a follow-up a sample outline set on an index card, which exhibit slightly different behaviour.

SAMPLE PERSONAL CHEQUE:

The command I have used to date to print this is:

lp -o media=letter -o PageSize=Custom.2.75x6.25in -o landscape

The expected behaviour is that a cheque fed through with the guide arms brought in will be printed as a centre fed page with the printing starting at the leading edge of the page. The behaviour that I am now getting is that printing is centred on a letter-sized page. It makes no difference if I remove the 'media=letter' option.

INDEX CARD:

The command I have used to date to print this is:

lp -o media=letter -o PageSize=Custom.3.0x5.0in -o portrait

The expected behaviour is that a cheque fed through with the guide arms brought in will be printed as a centre fed page with the printing starting at the leading edge of the page. The behaviour that I am now getting is that printing is done on the bottom left hand side of the a letter-sized page. Again, it makes no difference if I remove the 'media=letter' option.

Any help would be most appreciated.

advTHANKSance.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

Sample outline created in vim-outliner and typeset on an index card via LaTeX.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1024578/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

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[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Try to remove the "-o media letter" from your command lines:

lp -o PageSize=Custom.2.75x6.25in -o landscape
lp -o PageSize=Custom.3.0x5.0in -o portrait

If this still does not solve the problem, remove also the "-o landscape".

Please also follow the instructions of the sections "CUPS error_log" and "Capturing print job data" on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems. Thanks.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

Dear Till,

The -o landscape is significant because the cheque is fed that way into the printer short edge first.

I have repeated the commands with the -o media=letter removed with no difference in observed behaviour. Scans and log files are attached in this and subsequent posts.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

/var/log/cups/error_log when printing sample cheque.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

/var/log/cups/error_log when printing sample index card.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

Scan of sample index card printout.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Can you attach your PPD file (from /etc/cups/ppd/) of your printer? Thanks.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

Enclosed is the PPD file for the Brother HL-5370DW.

Sorry about the delay; I was away from my desktop computer for the past week.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

And here is the PPD file for the Brother MFC-6490CW for completeness since both printers suffer from similar (although not identical) problems.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

Till,

Any progress on this bug?

Thanks.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

This bug's status is still listed as 'Incomplete' even though the PPDs were posted on 23 Jul? Can someone please review and update?

Thanks..

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

Hello,

This bug has almost expired due to lack of activity. I am wondering why it is still marked incomplete? This seems to me to be a critical issue; at least in a publishing workflow like we have setup. And it seems to creep back with subsequent releases to Ubuntu. Can we please confirm?

Thanks.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

I am enclosing a copy of the relevant parts of /var/log/cups/error_log.

Reading lines 76-95, I notice that the BoundingBox is given correctly (216x360), but the Page is given (on line 76) as 612x792 even though the PageSize option (in line 24) is given to be Custom.3.0x5.0in.

Does this help at all in isolating the problem?

[Dave Gilbert (ubuntu-treblig)]

In your report you say that you had previously also used HP printers; have you tried this, after the upgrade that broke it; it would be interesting to know if the problem was only effecting Brother printers or was something more general.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

Dave, thanks for adjusting the bug status.

Regrettably I am unable to test with HP printers locally. One of the reasons we switched to Brother was their support for Linux. We use both the HL-5370DW for business printing, albeit with several different custom sizes, and the MFC-6490CW for colour architectural prints up to 11"x17". However, the Brother Linux drivers havn't changed since 2009, and so I should think that it is something upstream that changed. The best that I can guess is that stock page size, i.e., US Letter, is somehow overriding the custom page directive from lp, and then too, the offsets are being incorrectly calculated.

I will do my best to find a test bed for an HP printer, and report back.

As you can probably surmise from my past bug reports all relating to custom page sizes breaking in new releases, it would be great if we might include this as part of the general test suite for cups even keeping in mind the changes that I am hearing about in version 1.6?

Regards.

[Pavneet Arora (usonianhorizon)]

Okay, found an HP printer: LaserJet Pro 200 Color to test with. Driver is HPLIP. Tried the same lp command as I have outlined above:

lp -o PageSize=Custom.2.75x6.25in -o landscape -d HP-LaserJet-200-color-MFP-M276NW-4267

The small cheque printed out horizontally centred, but with the trail edge first: in essence what we had working with the Brother printers successfully until 12.04, except that the image is rotated 180 degrees. So it would be workable, except that this printer doesn't handle forms that small :(. Sigh.

Brother drivers haven't changed since 2009, so what else has changed?