CUPS problems with PDF printing

Question

I am having all manner of problems with PDF printing.  Recently added a Lexmark MX710 and have 7 machines that were previously printing fine to an X652de a T652 as well as a Samsung CLP770.  All network printers.
Now there are bizarre issues with PDF printing. CUPS version 1.6.1.  The MX710 will blue screen and reboot when printing one specific pdf without fail.  There are all kinds of random nonsensical results when printing from different locations.  A pdf that stalls the X and T652 with "filter error" will print from my own machine to the same printer, using the same versions of cups, .ppd file, and everything package related to cups.
Yet other PDF files will print, while some print complete gibberish, I can't find any rhyme or reason or anything predictable about any of it other than to say printing postscript files works fine all around.
This has been universally in KDE printing through Okular.
I've tried some things I've found suggested, such as modifying the mime.conv as suggested by an old ubuntu thread, adding the a2ps package, all to zero effect.
Last edited by TheWretched (2012-12-08 00:27:41)

Answer 1

At this point the only reasonable explanation I can think of is that the ppd package I downloaded and installed via included shell script from lexmark for the mx710 caused this whole catastrophe.  The only common thread for this problem starting was that I used this on all of the affected machines and they now all manifest problems.  And on four of these machines this is literally all that was done, they were loaded in september, have not been updated via pacman in any way, and are running the exact same version of cups poppler, and okular that they were then, which was working, and now cannot print pdf to any printer at all without causing one of several problems depending on the printer.
I cannot seem to get this reversed though.  I've gone so far as to force remove all the cups packages, and delete the files associated with the install script, but the problem remains afterward.  From what I can see so far all this lexmark package did was display a license agreement, then copy the ppd files in it's folder to /usr/share/ppd/Lexmark.  This particular printer, the mx710 has no .ppd available that I have found other than this one from Lexmark directly.  Open printing doesn't have anything for this model.
This printer's driver has some kind of a cups filter driver with it that the install script presumably installs, I suspect this could be what caused the problem specifically, but I must not be removing it correctly, despite following the file removal suggestions in the Lexmark readme for uninstallation.  CUPS printing is something I am new to and only have a basic understanding of.
To answer some specific questions I nearly forgot, I don't have cups pdf installed.  I have chrome installed which can successfully save pages to PDF, previously it could also print pdf, and presumably it prints everything as pdf given the cups pdf workflow.  That is also broken now too, so printing from the browser causes the printer to fail as well.  If I save as pdf from chrome, and print with adobe reader, it works.
Last edited by TheWretched (2012-12-11 14:25:40)