Isn't there an alternative?

[.]

For 15 years, CUPS has made me want to kill myself, time and again. Isn't there an alternative?

Lately it simply will not print to my Xerox Phaser 8860 network printer INTERMITTENTLY. Usually fails when I have an emergency, like right now.

I can ping the printer from anywhere, and it is showing online and Idle in the Cups webpage. But I send a job to it and it never sees it. Never shows up in jobs and the printer never goes busy.

The only thing in the logs is in the err.log:
[code]W [26/Feb/2013:12:47:38 -0800] failed to CreateProfile: org.freedesktop.ColorManager.AlreadyExists:profile id 'phaser-Gray..' already exists
W [26/Feb/2013:12:47:38 -0800] failed to CreateProfile: org.freedesktop.ColorManager.AlreadyExists:profile id 'phaser-RGB..' already exists
W [26/Feb/2013:12:47:38 -0800] failed to CreateDevice: org.freedesktop.ColorManager.AlreadyExists:device id 'cups-phaser' already exists
E [26/Feb/2013:12:47:38 -0800] Unable to open listen socket for address [v1.::1]:631 - Address family not supported by protocol.[/code]

Well I did an in-depth file search for phaser-RGB in /etc and /home/{user} and it does not exist. I am at my wit's end.

What could possibly be wrong?

[upscope]

Post by .
For 15 years, CUPS has made me want to kill myself, time and again.
Isn't there an alternative?
Lately it simply will not print to my Xerox Phaser 8860 network
printer INTERMITTENTLY. Usually fails when I have an emergency, like
right now.
I can ping the printer from anywhere, and it is showing online and
Idle in the Cups webpage. But I send a job to it and it never sees
it. Never shows up in jobs and the printer never goes busy.
[org.freedesktop.ColorManager.AlreadyExists:profile id 'phaser-Gray..'
[already exists
org.freedesktop.ColorManager.AlreadyExists:profile id 'phaser-RGB..'
org.freedesktop.ColorManager.AlreadyExists:device id 'cups-phaser'
already exists E [26/Feb/2013:12:47:38 -0800] Unable to open listen
socket for address [v1.::1]:631 - Address family not supported by
protocol.[/code]
Well I did an in-depth file search for phaser-RGB in /etc and
/home/{user} and it does not exist. I am at my wit's end.
What could possibly be wrong?

You don't say what OS your using. Have you tried to reinstall the Xerox
Cups driver? If your on openSUSE as an example, the PPD file is located
at /etc/cups/PPD/.

[Thomas Mieslinger]

Post by .
For 15 years, CUPS has made me want to kill myself, time and again.
Isn't there an alternative?

For my experience everywhere where the pure and innocent data and
algorithms of information technology hits the reality you have these
kind of Problems. Every reality interfacing device and their software
like printers, mice, networkinterfaces, harddrives, network cables has
these kind of problems.

Somehow I got over it and I only think about how I can get better in
debugging Problems.

Personally, I haven't seen that another printjob queueing software that
is better than cups.

Thomas

[Johannes Meixner]

Hello,

Post by Thomas Mieslinger
For my experience everywhere where the pure and innocent data and
algorithms of information technology hits the reality you have these
kind of Problems. Every reality interfacing device and their software
like printers, mice, networkinterfaces, harddrives, network cables has
these kind of problems.

See the section "CUPS: The server between user and printer" at
http://en.opensuse.org/Concepts_printing
I use the wording "between user and printer" intentionally.

For some more detailed background information you may have a look
at the "Keep printer device info" thread on the cups.general
newsgroup (the cups-B9D8k9nSxTHQT0dZR+***@public.gmane.org mailing list) at
http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?gcups.general+T+Q%22Keep+printer+device+info%22
in particular:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"there is no printer in the printing system".

What I mean is that there is no software representation
of the real piece of hardware in the printing system.
Actually queues and printers are very different things.
A printer is a piece of hardware.
A queue is basically a named output channel
which (hopefully) results correct output on a printer.

...

Printer management tools cannot exist.
Queue management tools exist and also special tools for
printer maintenance (like "hp-toolbox") exist
but a generic printer management tool cannot exist.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

It is not possible to implement a generic solution
(at least not with reasonable effort), see also
http://www.cups.org/str.php?L2531

Post by Thomas Mieslinger
Personally, I haven't seen that another printjob queueing
software that is better than cups.

Which is the reason why many/most/all? Linux distributions
and many other Unix-like operating systems use CUPS.

When we (i.e. SUSE) switched in several steps from LPR/apsfilter
to LPRng/lpdfilter to CUPS or LPRng/lpdfilter to only CUPS,
we expected for each switch to get at first more bug reports
but actually we got for each switch less bug reports right
from the date of the switch which means:
CUPS works better than LPRng/lpdfilter and
LPRng/lpdfilter works better than LPR/apsfilter
for very most users including enterprise use cases.


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner

[Johannes Meixner]

Post by .
For 15 years, CUPS has made me want to kill myself, time and again.
Isn't there an alternative?

Using an Interneret seach engine (like Google) results e.g.:
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/18284/is-there-an-alternative-to-cups
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/cups-alternative-394198/
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-questions/2006-July/126439.html
and so on...

Post by .
What could possibly be wrong?

As you don't want to use CUPS you don't need to have a look at
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:How_to_Report_a_Printing_Issue

[Adam Tauno Williams]

Post by .
For 15 years, CUPS has made me want to kill myself, time and again.
Isn't there an alternative?

For just about as long it has worked extremely reliably for me; both at
home with 2 printers and at work with 114 printers.

Post by .
Lately it simply will not print to my Xerox Phaser 8860 network
printer INTERMITTENTLY. Usually fails when I have an emergency, like
right now.

Ah, do not blame CUPS. Just a few weeks ago I finally managed to kick
the last Xerox Phaser off my [work] network; replaced by better and MUCH
MORE RELIABLE Brother MFC-9970 units.

Post by .
I can ping the printer from anywhere, and it is showing online and
Idle in the Cups webpage. But I send a job to it and it never sees
it. Never shows up in jobs and the printer never goes busy.
E [26/Feb/2013:12:47:38 -0800] Unable to open listen socket for
address [v1.::1]:631 - Address family not supported by
protocol.[/code]
Well I did an in-depth file search for phaser-RGB in /etc
and /home/{user} and it does not exist. I am at my wit's end.
What could possibly be wrong?

How are you attempting to submit jobs to the printer - LPD, IPP, SOCKET,
etc... ? If you look in "netstat --tcp" is there a connection between
your CUPS instance and the printer? And what state is it in?

CUPS can only do so much to work around an extremely flakey and poorly
desgined device. I'd first suggest just trying a different mechanism to
submit jobs to the printer; if you are using LPD switch to SOCKET.

[m***@public.gmane.org]

On Sat, Mar 2, 2013, at 4:11, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:

On Tue, 2013-02-26 at 13:04 -0800, . wrote:

For 15 years, CUPS has made me want to kill myself, time and again.

Isn't there an alternative?



For just about as long it has worked extremely reliably for me; both at

home with 2 printers and at work with 114 printers.


Now see, right there you destroy your credibility with alot of us.


Lately it simply will not print to my Xerox Phaser 8860 network

printer INTERMITTENTLY. Usually fails when I have an emergency, like

right now.



Ah, do not blame CUPS. Just a few weeks ago I finally managed to kick

the last Xerox Phaser off my [work] network; replaced by better and
MUCH

MORE RELIABLE Brother MFC-9970 units.


You don't know what the 8860 is. It is a $2,500 solid-ink commercial
printer, and is very reliable. I suspect that whatever Xerox you had
was a cheap one.


How are you attempting to submit jobs to the printer - LPD, IPP,
SOCKET,

etc... ? If you look in "netstat --tcp" is there a connection between

your CUPS instance and the printer? And what state is it in?



CUPS can only do so much to work around an extremely flakey and poorly

desgined device. I'd first suggest just trying a different mechanism
to

submit jobs to the printer; if you are using LPD switch to SOCKET.


I have the printer set to socket://192.168.1.192

I can send the Cups test page to it all day long using the web
interface, even when it won't print otherwise. I can send pages to the
printer all day long using XFCE's Xfprint4 utility which uses the Cups
backend, even when it won't print otherwise. The problem THIS TIME is
the client. It fails INTERMITTENTLY, which is the very worst kind.

[upscope]

Post by .
For 15 years, CUPS has made me want to kill myself, time and again.
Isn't there an alternative?
For just about as long it has worked extremely reliably for me; both at
home with 2 printers and at work with 114 printers.
Now see, right there you destroy your credibility with alot of us.
Lately it simply will not print to my Xerox Phaser 8860 network
printer INTERMITTENTLY. Usually fails when I have an emergency, like
right now.
Ah, do not blame CUPS. Just a few weeks ago I finally managed to kick
the last Xerox Phaser off my [work] network; replaced by better and MUCH
MORE RELIABLE Brother MFC-9970 units.
You don't know what the 8860 is. It is a $2,500 solid-ink commercial
printer, and is very reliable. I suspect that whatever Xerox you had
was a cheap one.
How are you attempting to submit jobs to the printer - LPD, IPP, SOCKET,
etc... ? If you look in "netstat --tcp" is there a connection between
your CUPS instance and the printer? And what state is it in?
CUPS can only do so much to work around an extremely flakey and poorly
desgined device. I'd first suggest just trying a different mechanism to
submit jobs to the printer; if you are using LPD switch to SOCKET.
I have the printer set to socket://192.168.1.192
I can send the Cups test page to it all day long using the web
interface, even when it won't print otherwise. I can send pages to
the printer all day long using XFCE's Xfprint4 utility which uses the
Cups
backend, even when it won't print otherwise. The problem THIS TIME is
the client. It fails INTERMITTENTLY, which is the very worst kind.

I agree with you. I had a Xerox 6120 Phaser for seven years on my system
before I had to replace it. I used the xerox driver for it and ran it
with openSUSE from 9.0 to 12.1. No problems. I replaced because it
finally wore out and the toner cartridges were getting to expensive. If
I had a business I would have replaced it with another Xerox, but being
retire and for home use I got a Brothers MFC-J6710DW. No complaints
except with the scanner driver and printer drivers still being 32-bit
but they run fine with my 64 bit OS.

In process of testing 12.3 RC3 and will see if drivers still work.

russ