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.  :-(

6 comments:

  1. 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

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

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  3. 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.

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

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  5. 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.

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    Replies
    1. @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?

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