Saturday, September 24, 2011

Fixing CUPS-PDF

Not that I needed to find another bug in Mint 11 Katya/Ubuntu 11 Natty, but I just discovered that the "Print to PDF" printer (cups-pdf) was writing a 2.1 KB PDF file containing a single blank page, regardless of what I printed.  A quick web search turned up multiple reports of this.  I used Synaptic to reinstall the cups-pdf package, to no avail.  The solution (which I found on a bug report web page) was to go into Control Center > Printing, delete the "Print to PDF" printer entirely, then use Server > New Printer to reinstall it.  It seems to be working now.  I wonder what the interarrival time for the next gremlin is.  :-(
Posted by Paul A. Rubin at 3:40 PM
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6 comments:

  1. AnonymousOctober 4, 2011 at 12:39 AM

    Thanks for the post, googling "linux mint all my pdfs are 2.1 kb" only turned up 7 hits, and only this post hit the spot.

    jh

    ReplyDelete
  2. Paul A. RubinOctober 4, 2011 at 9:22 AM

    Glad it helped -- lets me "pay forward" the assistance I've gotten from other blogs.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Paul A. RubinNovember 8, 2011 at 11:25 AM

    Well, it broke again (no idea why), this time producing no output file whatsoever. So I deleted the printer, tried both Add > Printer and Server > New > Printer (they produce the same dialog), and discovered the dialog now only allows me to add networked printers. I couldn't find a way to add the PDF printer there. So I reinstalled the cups-pdf package, and this time that worked.

    ReplyDelete
  4. AnonymousMarch 11, 2012 at 5:52 AM

    Worked for me, thanks! (I will - hopefully - keep a mental note about the reinstall)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Karl L. PearsonJune 5, 2012 at 11:54 PM

    Apparently it's a problem with version 2.5.1, which is all I can find using the repositories. I'm going online to find version 2.5.0, which worked without continually having to keep removing, adding, etc.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Paul A. RubinJune 6, 2012 at 7:53 AM

      @Karl: I just checked, and I'm on 2.5.1-3 now. It hasn't gorked in seven months, although possibly because I use it very sparingly. Perhaps they slipped a fix into -3?

      Delete

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