From The Linux Foundation
CUPS FAQ
Basics
In which forum should I ask CUPS related questions?
Forum: General Discussion
Better is to discuss on the CUPS mailing list/newsgroups on the CUPS web site.
I installed and configured CUPS, but my printer doesn't work. What next?
The next step is to enable debug logging, and read the error_log file. Try to find errors, and compare them to commonly found errors.
How do I enable debugging?
1. Edit the file /etc/cups/cupsd.conf
2. Change the line LogLevel to debug.
3. Restart cupsd. killall -HUP cupsd
It is usually not helpful to use debug2 LogLevel, because this reports errors not related to printing.
Why doesn't CUPS recognize the PPD I just added?
You must restart CUPS for new PPD's to be read.
killall -HUP cupsd
What is the maximum number of jobs that I can print?
It is limited by the variable MaxJobs in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf.
Why is the URI mangled?
The new URI format usb://make/model[1] is used to manage changes in the port number, since port numbers are assigned more-or- less randomly when the system boots. This won't be a problem if you only have a single printer connected via USB.
How do I print pages always in reverse order?
In the PPD: *DefaultOutputOrder: "reverse" See: http://partners.adobe.com/public/developer/ps/index_specs.html, link PostScript Printer Description (PPD) File Format Specification Version 4.3 #5003.
How do I print to a Zoom Internet Gateway?
The gateway uses the lpd protocol. The queue name is lp. Enter lpd://192.168.123.254/lp as the location to print to. Change the IP address as needed.
Using CUPS
Where do I file a bug report?
What version of CUPS am I using?
First try cups-config --version If this does not work surf to http://localhost:631/printers and see the CUPS version in the title bar of your browser.
How come printing from Windows to GNU/Linux produces greyscale images?
Windows clients will automagically try to determine the features of the printer. If "color" is not listed as a feature, they will convert images to black and white. http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;283277
Why do images always print portrait, but not landscape?
changing the print command to either of following should work as well as moving to CUPS 1.1.18
sed -e 's/Orientation: Landscape/Orientation: Portrait/' | lpr sed -e 's/Orientation: Landscape/Orientation: Portrait/' | kprinter --stdin
http://sdb.suse.de/en/sdb/html/jsmeix_print-cups-landscape-81.html
How do I set landscape mode in the printer?
Printers do not necesarily have a landscape mode - the rotation is handled in software before the print job reaches the printer.
See news://b23pd6$gen$1@dns.easysw.com (which is an entry on "Landscape Printing" in the cups.general newsgroup on the news.easysw.com newsgroup server.
What software can rotate images between landscape and portrait orientations?
Why does my printer ignore the color type set in CUPS?
It is possible to override this setting from the invoking application. For example, Mozilla has an Color/Greyscale option in the print dialogue.
How do I print PCL?
Assuming your printer supports PCL, setup a "raw" queue in CUPS. Alternatively, you can try lpr -o raw file.
How do I setup a PCL queue?
Make an additional raw queue (without a PPD file) and send the PCL jobs to there, or use -o raw on the lpr command line when you send a PCL job to your normal print queue.
If that does not work, then uncomment the octet-stream lines in /etc/cups/mime.types and /etc/cups/mime.convs, then restart the CUPS daemon.
How do I set the IP of my LAN printer?
see http://localhost:631/sam.html#COMMON_NETWORK.
How do I print to a file?
One needs a queue pointing to a file. For such a queue, edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf activating the FileDevice directive so that it reads FileDevice Yes (without the "#" in the beginning). After re-starting the CUPS daemon, you can print to a file.
When the input data are text files, one simply use a raw queue:
lpadmin -p tofile -E -v file:/tmp/printout
If the input is also PostScript or images, you will need filters. GhostScript can extract the text from PostScript or PDF files using the ps2ascii filter (part of the GhostScript package). For images you can use http://dyne.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/jpeg2ascii/. You only need to put these into an appropriate CUPS filter and make a PPD for this. See http://www.cups.org/spm.html for how to do this.
How do I disable the -oraw option on the server side?
Comment out the application/vnd.cups-raw line in the mime.types file.
How do I generate a report of CUPS statistics?
See http://amaru.ti6.tu-harburg.de/portal/Members/ti6ntm/Projekte/Printanalyzer.
How do I count pages printed?
While CUPS has a basic utility to do this, PyKota is recommended.
Where can I find a fax driver?
http://freshmeat.net/projects/fax4cups/?topic_id=36
Why does a blank page print for every print job?
The exact cause is unknown. There is one possible workaround, if you do not need the CUPS accounting information.
The accounting functionality can be disabled in the cupsomatic filter by changing the line my $ps_accounting = 1; to
my $ps_accounting = 0;
in the filter script /usr/lib/cups/filter/cupsomatic as the user root. If you use /etc/foomatic/filter.conf, disable ps_accounting there.
Why doesn't the PPD file work with Windows 2000?
Windows 2000 has a bug which limits it to reading the options at a maximum of 40 characters per line. This limitation is not included in the PPD Spec. It is possible to modify the PPD manually, so each line is limited to 40 characters.
Please contact Microsoft regarding this bug, as we are looking forward to them providing a speedy resolution to this error.
How do I cancel all print jobs at once?
cancel -a printername
Why do the print jobs have the incorrect time?
CUPS reads the time information from the shell variable TZ. You'll need to set this variable, for example, export TZ="America/Chicago" in bash.
What happens if the printer name has a slash or space in the name?
Replace a slash with %2f and a space with %20.
anchor: which_ppd
Which PPD do I use with a PostScript printer?
Do not use the linuxprinting.org PPD's. Use the manufacturer PPD's for Windows NT.
How do I use economode?
When you print with kprinter you can click the Properties button in the dialog and in the options dialog you find the economy mode on the Driver Settings tab.
On the command line use the -o Economode=On option:
lpr -o Economode=On file.ps
CUPS and Windows
Do Windows clients support ipp?
Win clients don't support the IPP:// or ipp:// syntax. You'll have to use http, like this:
http://server:631/printers/printer
CUPS Errors
cupsd: Child exited with status 1!?
If running CUPS from the command line, cupsd must be started as root.
cupsd: Child exited with status 98!?
Another process is using the port that cupsd listens to (default 631). It might be the rpc.rquotad deamon. Either disable this deamon or make sure cupsd starts before nfs.
**FAIL** Unable to open PPD file - Line longer than the maximum allowed (255 characters)?
To use the new CUPS v1.1.19 together with Foomatic you MUST upgrade to Foomatic 3.0.x.
a2ps: cannot find file 'jpeg.ssh'?
a2ps: cannot find file 'gif.ssh'?
a2ps has been compiled without ImageMagick support. Recomplie cups after installing ImageMagick.
CUPS Log Errors
Where is all the information about the CUPS error_log?
It has its own FAQ.