Removing cups?
Yes. Experience has shown ‘zypper remove --clean-deps’ and reinstalling in most cases works better than troubleshooting based on trial and error. If it does cause trouble, you are doomed anyway in the long term.
I verified that running the Brother installer for Linux makes my printers great again: To install the printer driver easily using a tool. (Linux) | Brother
karl@3400G:~> LANG=C lpstat -a
HLL2350DW accepting requests since Thu Jun 10 13:29:20 2021
MFC255CW accepting requests since Fri Jun 4 14:07:25 2021
karl@3400G:~>
Thus reinstalling everything at most takes a few minutes.
I did try it
But the problem remains
I wonder if it’s ghostscript?
I have some previous pdf’s that are fine that came from a different version 9.50
Now it’s 9.54
Many applications have print to pdf. What about gimp?
Also blank
Try reinstalling these:
[FONT=monospace]**3400G:~ #** zypper remove --clean-deps ghostscript gutenprint
Reading installed packages...
Resolving package dependencies...
The following 17 packages are going to be REMOVED:
cups cups-filters ghostscript ghostscript-x11 graphviz-gnome groff-full gutenprint gxditview libnetpbm11 libpoppler-cpp0 libqpdf28 netpbm paper parallel-printer-support perl-IPC-Run3 poppler-tools psutils
17 packages to remove.
After the operation, 159.8 MiB will be freed.
**Continue? [y/n/v/...? shows all options] (y): **n
**3400G:~ #**[/FONT]
I thought let’s try installing cups-pdf and I get:
(1/1) Installing: cups-pdf-3.0.1-1.16.x86_64 .........................................................................[done]
Additional rpm output:
lpadmin: Printer drivers are deprecated and will stop working in a future version of CUPS.
Is maybe the future that lpadmin warning out already passed?
Anyhow tried printing from Firefox and I see have an additional choice, destination: CUPS-PDF. Then had to find out where the document goes and found it looking into “/etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf” in /var/spool/cups-pdf/$USER/
The resulting document is also for me blank. Not needing it I have de-installed it.
Also did a search for “cups-pdf blank” and see the problem is widespread and multiple solutions are proposed.
Interesting. You have blank too
I changed the output location FYI. Yeah, that’s just a silly location.
The internet search BTW is mostly fairly historic, nothing recent that I could see
Note: I have flawless printing to pdf file, but none of these are installed:
**3400G:~ #** zypper se cups-pdf gutenprint
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
S | Name | Summary | Type
--+-----------------------+------------------------------------------------------------+--------
| cups-pdf | Virtual PDF printer for CUPS | package
| gutenprint | Printer drivers for CUPS from the Gutenprint project | package
| gutenprint-devel | Development environment for Gutenprint | package
| gutenprint-gimpplugin | Alternative GIMP print plug-in from the Gutenprint project | package
**3400G:~ #**
From the above I presume ghostscript is the culprit, be it a bad install or stale configuration files lurking. Try ghostscript print to pdf file blank pages issue - Google Suche
Yes, in Firefox I can do “Save to PDF” and Libreoffice has “Export as PDF…” and that works flawlessly, so therefore I do not need.
Never used before but even in gimp I have Print to File and checking Spectacle that also has Print to File (PDF) and all that is working fine.
So yes, what is the use-case that needs “cups-pdf”?
Hi Carl. Refer this ArchLinux bug report…
Description:
- Cups-pdf creates empty output pages after upgrading to ghostscript 9.54.0.
- /var/log/cups/cups-pdf-pdf_log says “ghostscript has finished: 256”
- Background: as of that ghostscript version “.setpdfwrite” is no longer supported (refer to
http://git.ghostscript.com/?p=ghostpdl.git;a=commitdiff;h=180419375973b9ce4664286a67106d712260ef7f)
– however, it’s still in the default setting for “GSCall” and it’s also listed
in /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf.- Workaround: removing “-c .setpdfwrite” from the “GSCall” setting fixed the issue.
FWIW, similar reported here (re cups-pdf)…
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/cups-pdf-printer-prints-a-blank-pdf-after-ghostscript-9-54-0-update-4175694164/
Both erlangen and 3400G have:
**erlangen:~ #** zypper if ghostscript
Loading repository data...
Reading installed packages...
Information for package ghostscript:
------------------------------------
Repository : openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Oss
Name : ghostscript
Version : 9.54.0-1.1
Arch : x86_64
Vendor : openSUSE
Installed Size : 50.5 MiB
Installed : Yes (automatically)
Status : up-to-date
Source package : ghostscript-9.54.0-1.1.src
Summary : The Ghostscript interpreter for PostScript and PDF
Description :
Ghostscript is a package of software that provides:
An interpreter for the PostScript language,
with the ability to convert PostScript language files
to many raster formats, view them on displays,
and print them on printers that don't have
PostScript language capability built in.
An interpreter for Portable Document Format (PDF) files,
with the same abilities.
The ability to convert PostScript language files
to PDF (with some limitations) and vice versa.
A set of C procedures (the Ghostscript library)
that implement the graphics and filtering
(data compression / decompression / conversion)
capabilities that appear as primitive operations
in the PostScript language and in PDF.
For information how to use Ghostscript see
/usr/share/ghostscript/9.54.0/doc/Use.htm
**erlangen:~ #** ll /etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf
ls: cannot access '/etc/cups/cups-pdf.conf': No such file or directory
**erlangen:~ #**
No stale configuration file, no trouble.
Glad to have been of help Carl.
You pretty much found the answer on your own already, i.e. it’s a workaround for apps lacking a native Save to PDF. More info: SDB:Printing to PDF - openSUSE Wiki