Adobe Reader 9 (Acrobat) printing no longer works

[cpisbell]

Printing documents using Adobe Reader 9 under Ubuntu 15.04 produces no output. The printer is activated, but no pages appear. This worked under 14.04 and 14.10.

Also noted that the options to print the current page and to print specified pages are now disabled in the print dialogue box.

Failing documents print successfully using evince.

Other applications tried (e.g. LibreOffice) are not affected. This problem appears to be specific to Adobe Reader 9.

Printer is a Brother HL-2070N.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.04
Package: cups 2.0.2-1ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.19.0-13.13-generic 3.19.3
Uname: Linux 3.19.0-13-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.17-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CupsErrorLog: E [11/Apr/2015:10:28:38 +0100] [Client 31] Returning IPP client-error-bad-request for Print-Job (ipp://localhost/printers/Brother-HL-2070N-series) from localhost
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Sat Apr 11 10:34:55 2015
InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-10-20 (902 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Release amd64 (20121017.5)
Lpstat: device for Brother-HL-2070N-series: lpd://cpiprint/BINARY_P1
MachineType: LENOVO 2958
Papersize: a4
PpdFiles: Error: command ['fgrep', '-H', '*NickName', '/etc/cups/ppd/Brother-HL-2070N-series.ppd'] failed with exit code 2: grep: /etc/cups/ppd/Brother-HL-2070N-series.ppd: Permission denied
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.19.0-13-generic root=UUID=23f8da47-4d92-4878-950e-c31980589751 ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: cups
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to vivid on 2015-04-05 (5 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 01/18/2010
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: 18CN42WW(V2.51)
dmi.board.name: NITU1
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: REFERENCE
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Tag
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: No Enclosure
dmi.chassis.version: N/A
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvr18CN42WW(V2.51):bd01/18/2010:svnLENOVO:pn2958:pvrLenovoG550:rvnLENOVO:rnNITU1:rvrREFERENCE:cvnNoEnclosure:ct10:cvrN/A:
dmi.product.name: 2958
dmi.product.version: Lenovo G550
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO
mtime.conffile..etc.cups.cupsd.conf: 2013-04-25T17:38:42.368282

[Pascal De Vuyst (pascal-devuyst)]

Please follow the troubleshooting steps here: http://blogs.adobe.com/acroread/2009/06/08/printing_with_adobe_reader_the/

[cpisbell (chrisisbell)]

Followed these instructions, but they made no difference.

Attached are two Wireshark traces of the communications with the printer. One shows unsuccessful output from Adobe Reader and the other successful output of the same document using Evince.

I wonder whether the fact that Acrobat Reader is a 32-bit application on a 64-bit operation system might be relevant.

[Pascal De Vuyst (pascal-devuyst)]

So with export ACRO_PRINT_DEBUG=1 you don't get an error?

[cpisbell (chrisisbell)]

The output is as follows:

Gtk-Message: Failed to load module "unity-gtk-module"

(acroread:4463): Gtk-WARNING **: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",

 The FINAL commandLine being sent to the printer : lpr -P Brother-HL-2070N-series -o EconoMode=off -o InputSlot=auto -o MediaType=plain -o PageRegion=A4 -o PageSize=A4 -o Resolution=1200x600dpi

There is no error message and the Gtk-WARNING line is repeated many times.

[Pascal De Vuyst (pascal-devuyst)]

Do you have /usr/bin/lpr command part of the cups-bsd package installed on your system?

Run the following commands on a terminal:
which lpr
apt-cache policy cups-bsd

Also provide https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems#Capturing_print_job_data to see whether the ouput of Adobe Reader is already broken.

Thanks Pascal

[cpisbell (chrisisbell)]

Command output:

chris@chris-laptop:~$ which lpr
/usr/bin/lpr
chris@chris-laptop:~$ apt-cache policy cups-bsd
cups-bsd:
  Installed: 2.0.2-1ubuntu3
  Candidate: 2.0.2-1ubuntu3
  Version table:
 *** 2.0.2-1ubuntu3 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Output attached as requested. This is reported by file as:

chris@chris-laptop:~$ file ~/appout
/home/chris/appout: PostScript document text conforming DSC level 3.1, Level 3

Note: Attempting to open this file with evince or evinve-previewer causes it to crash.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Gabriele Magi (geraden-78)]

Hello, just to confirm that I have found the same bug in Ubuntu Gnome 15.04.
Adobe 9.5.5 is working correctly in Ubuntu 14.04, 12.04, and SolydK/Debian8: all of them are 32 bit, so I think that using a 32bit version on a 64 bit distro is not relevant.
I tried printing a file with two different printers, but with no luck.
Printing through evince/Libreoffice is ok.

[Martin Withelm (emikesch)]

Hi!

I have the same problem with Ubuntu 15.04 and Adobe Reader 9.5.5.
Former version Ubuntu 14.04 worked fine.
My Samsung CLX-3170 tells me: "cups-ipp-conformance-failure-report".
Standard PDF-Viewer works fine.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

According to comment #7 it seems that the PostScript file created by Adobe Reader (it does not send PDF files as print job data) makes evince (or perhaps some program called by it, like ghostscript) crash.

A quick test on a system using Ghostscript 9.16 shows that no crash happened neither when opening the file via evince or by directly calling Ghostscript.

Perhaps it is a problem in Ghostscript 9.15.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

I checked a stock Vivid with Ghostscript 9.15 now and calling

gs appout

errors. This problem does not occur any more with Ghostscript 9.16 as it will be used in Wily.

Calling evince leads to a crash, meaning that evince cannot cope with Ghostscript erroring out, which is another bug.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Opened new bug 1481134 for the evince crash.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Wily is now shipping Ghostscript 9.16, closing the ghostscript task.

[Nasi Chassoulas (nasi-n)]

Is there a workaround to this bug in 15.04? I use the print functionality in Adobe Reader 9 often and can not really wait until 15.10.

[Marian Krause (mkdugi)]

Hi.
I have Xerox WC 6015. I had problem with printing in acroread 9.5.5.

I've installed ghostscript 9.16 from Ubuntu 15.10 and this solved my problem.

I've installed:
ghostscript_9.16-dfsg-0-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb
libgs9_9.16-dfsg-0-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb
libgs9-common_9.16-dfsg-0-0ubuntu3_all.deb

https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/wily/amd64/libgs9-common/9.16~dfsg~0-0ubuntu3
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/wily/amd64/libgs9/9.16~dfsg~0-0ubuntu3
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/wily/amd64/ghostscript/9.16~dfsg~0-0ubuntu3

But this is workaround for Vivid.