Bug 492690

Summary: Cannot print due to insufficient printer driver packages
Product: [openSUSE] openSUSE 11.1 Reporter: Federico Mena Quintero <federico>
Component: PrintingAssignee: Dr. Werner Fink <werner>
Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX QA Contact: Johannes Meixner <jsmeix>
Severity: Major    
Priority: P5 - None CC: jsmeix, vuntz
Version: Final   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: i586   
OS: Other   
Whiteboard:
Found By: Development Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---
Bug Depends on: 494547    
Bug Blocks:    
Attachments: Full output from the printing troubleshooter

Description Federico Mena Quintero 2009-04-07 00:18:28 UTC
I plugged an HP Laserjet 1200 and went to the Printing capplet in the control center to add it.  I clicked through all the defaults.

When I tried to print from Evince, it spooled the data correctly but then the printing system said there was an error.  Its "printing troubleshooter" came up with this:

E [06/Apr/2009:19:14:51 -0500] PID 6647 (/usr/lib/cups/filter/CUPSToOmni) stopped with status 1!
I [06/Apr/2009:19:14:51 -0500] Hint: Try setting the LogLevel to "debug" to find out more.
E [06/Apr/2009:19:14:51 -0500] [Job 2] CUPSToOmni: Fatal error: unable to load "libHP_LaserJet_1200.so", g_module_error returns "libHP_LaserJet_1200.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory"
E [06/Apr/2009:19:14:51 -0500] [Job 2] CUPSToOmni: No pages printed!

Is that libHP_LaserJet_1200.so really supposed to exist?
Comment 1 Federico Mena Quintero 2009-04-07 00:20:00 UTC
Created attachment 284377 [details]
Full output from the printing troubleshooter
Comment 2 Johannes Meixner 2009-04-07 06:28:05 UTC
What exactly is "the Printing capplet in the control center"?
Which "control center"? - i.e. which desktop system?

We have many printer setup tools:
- YaST printer setup tool
- KDE printer setup tool
- Gnome printer setup tool
- CUPS web frontend
- for HP devices: HP's HPLIP driver setup tool "hp-setup"
- anything else?

Which printer setup tool are you talking about?
Is there no meaningful window title or a "help"
or "about" info in your printer setup tool?
If you don't know which printer setup tool
the desktop magic runs, provide a screenshot.

For a HP Laserjet 1200 the Omni driver is a very poor choice.
There are much better drivers avaialable for a true PostScript
printer (prefer the HPLIP/hpijs driver or the original PPD
from HP in the manufacturer-PPDs package).

I assume it is the Gnome printer setup tool "system-config-printer"
which belongs to the component "Gnome" which fails to select
a driver which is known to work well for the HP Laserjet 1200.

Regarding the Omni driver, see bug #464435 and bug #429345
and in general see
http://openprinting.org/show_driver.cgi?driver=omni
-----------------------------------------------------------------
IBM is not maintaining any more the Omni printer driver
...
We do not recommend to use Omni
...
also do not develop on or maintain the project.
-----------------------------------------------------------------


Regarding "When I tried to print from Evince":
Does is only fail when printing from Evince?
If yes, the root cause is probably an issue in Evince
(e.g. bad PostScript output from Evince).
Evince also belongs to the component "Gnome".
Comment 3 Federico Mena Quintero 2009-04-07 19:51:38 UTC
(In reply to comment #2)
> What exactly is "the Printing capplet in the control center"?
> Which "control center"? - i.e. which desktop system?

This is GNOME's control center, and system-config-printer.
 
> For a HP Laserjet 1200 the Omni driver is a very poor choice.
> There are much better drivers avaialable for a true PostScript
> printer (prefer the HPLIP/hpijs driver or the original PPD
> from HP in the manufacturer-PPDs package).

Oh, yeah, I found it odd that the Omni driver got picked by default (previous versions of openSUSE would offer me Gutenprint or PostScript).  Should I file a bug about this incorrect default?

I don't think this is a problem in system-config-printer itself.  After my initial attempt didn't work, I erased all print queues and used YaST's printer setup tool to configure a printer again.  It also offered me only the Omni driver.

By the way, I just tried to add the printer again from YaST.  It offered me the Omni driver, so I clicked on "add driver", removed Omni, and added Gutenprint plus the normal PostSript driver.  Eventually it said that PostScript was the recommended one; I chose that one and printing works now.

It seems that we have two bugs, then?

1. Omni drivers are installed and used by default, even though you shouldn't use them.
2. "Good" drivers are not installed by default?
Comment 4 Johannes Meixner 2009-04-08 08:26:15 UTC
Perhaps the root cause is bug #464435 because
I do not see a fix for in in the RPM changelog
of ghostscript-omni which is instelled on my
openSUSE 11.1 workstation.
In contrast the ghostscript-omni RPM in
head/factory/stable/whatever-it-is-called
has this RPM changelog entry regarding bug #464435
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Fix Mannufacturer within PPD of omni (bnc#464435)
- Add workaround vor bnc#429345 to make cups able to find omni libs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
If the root cause is bug #464435 this one is a duplicate.

Perhaps the root cause is that on your system
insufficient printer driver packages were installed by default
On my openSUSE 11.1 workstation I got by default installed:
cups-drivers, hplip, gutenprint, and manufacturer-PPDs
(ghostscript-omni was also installed).
I don't know why on your system ghostscript-omni was instelled
(no other package requires ghostscript-omni) but the really useful
printer driver packages were not installed.
If you did not un-select packages or patterns which were selected
to be installed by default (e.g. a printing pattern),
the bug belongs to the component "Patterns".
Comment 5 Federico Mena Quintero 2009-04-14 01:08:45 UTC
(In reply to comment #4)
> Perhaps the root cause is bug #464435 because
> I do not see a fix for in in the RPM changelog
> of ghostscript-omni which is instelled on my
> openSUSE 11.1 workstation.
> In contrast the ghostscript-omni RPM in
> head/factory/stable/whatever-it-is-called
> has this RPM changelog entry regarding bug #464435
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Fix Mannufacturer within PPD of omni (bnc#464435)
> - Add workaround vor bnc#429345 to make cups able to find omni libs
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------

If that fix is only in Factory, then I guess it needs to be submitted for openSUSE 11.1 as well.

> Perhaps the root cause is that on your system
> insufficient printer driver packages were installed by default
> On my openSUSE 11.1 workstation I got by default installed:
> cups-drivers, hplip, gutenprint, and manufacturer-PPDs
> (ghostscript-omni was also installed).
> I don't know why on your system ghostscript-omni was instelled

My installation was done from the GNOME Live CD.  I'll file a bug about this against the patterns.
Comment 6 Federico Mena Quintero 2009-04-14 01:11:44 UTC
Done, see bug #494547 for the problem with the installation patterns.
Comment 7 Vincent Untz 2009-04-28 16:13:09 UTC
Federico: so, hrm, are you keeping the bug open only for:

(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> > - Fix Mannufacturer within PPD of omni (bnc#464435)
> > - Add workaround vor bnc#429345 to make cups able to find omni libs
> > ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> If that fix is only in Factory, then I guess it needs to be submitted for
> openSUSE 11.1 as well.

If yes, I guess the bug shouldn't be filed against GNOME ;-)
Comment 8 Federico Mena Quintero 2009-04-28 23:36:58 UTC
Oh, yeah - reassigning to the Printing component.
Comment 10 Dr. Werner Fink 2009-05-07 15:50:20 UTC
Why I've got this bug?
Comment 11 Johannes Meixner 2009-05-07 17:21:34 UTC
Because of comment #5
regarding the fix in ghostscript-omni
----------------------------------------------------------------------
- Fix Mannufacturer within PPD of omni (bnc#464435)
- Add workaround vor bnc#429345 to make cups able to find omni libs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
where Federico Mena Quintero asked:
> If that fix is only in Factory, then I guess it needs to be
> submitted for openSUSE 11.1 as well.
Comment 13 Dr. Werner Fink 2009-05-08 15:59:50 UTC
IMHO it is not important as normally Omni is outdated for this type
of printer. Just do not use it.
Comment 14 Federico Mena Quintero 2009-05-15 23:51:58 UTC
Users don't know that Omni is outdated and that they shouldn't use it.

We should not be installing it by default (or even keeping it in the build at all) if it's not meant to be used.  Otherwise, users get a broken system as soon as they install.