After UP7, can you add a printer?

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dclement

After UP7, can you add a printer?

Post by dclement »

Hello,

I have but one serious issue to mention after applying UP7. I'm observing this on 2 laptops, one running Mate, the other one XFCE.

When you go to system > printing (system-config-printer), you can't add a printer, or change the driver for an installed printer. That's because, whereas you can select a printer brand from the left pane, the driver choice in the right pane is empty! (That's really little choice...)

I suppose the cups interface can still be used, but it's more tedious. What happened to system-config-printer?

TIA - best regards, Daniel
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
qazwsxedc

Re: After UP7, can you add a printer?

Post by qazwsxedc »

I'm having a similar problem, described at [url]http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=198&t=146051#p768783[/url]

system-config-printer works for me only on the first invocation after a fresh boot. On the second and every subsequent invocation after a fresh boot it stops me from adding printers, too, in a slightly different way, though. Try rebooting (sheesh, did I just write that in a Linux-related forum?) and then see whether system-config-printer behaves properly on the first invocation.
dclement

Re: After UP7, can you add a printer?

Post by dclement »

Yes, qazwsxedc, I had a look at your thread even before I updated to UP7, but I think we have two different issues here. My PDF printer still works correctly (as well as my other printers).

But I can't get system-config-printer to work beyond the printer selection. Even after a fresh reboot, the behavior is just as I described in my original post: driver list empty.

Worse yet, I'm unable to modify or add printers through the CUPS web interface.
py-thon

Re: After UP7, can you add a printer?

Post by py-thon »

My printer didn't work after UP7 (only Generic-CUPS-PDF-Printer) either. The printer's display only showed to receive something from the PC for a few seconds but didn't print anything afterwards. I deleted the settings in system-config-printer, then added the printer anew without any problem. Now it works even better than before, because a bug (not existing in Mint 10, but causing problems since changing to LMDE in 2012) which made the printer print at about 97% no matter what setting has disappeared.
So, the answer in to the question in the headline is yes.
Last edited by py-thon on Tue Oct 08, 2013 12:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
dclement

Re: After UP7, can you add a printer?

Post by dclement »

Doesn't work for me :-( I deleted the PDF printer and I was unable to reinstall it with system-config-printer (again, 2 PCs with different versions of LMDE).

Fortunately, I regained access to the CUPS web interface (for whatever reason I was no longer in the lpadmin group). I can perform management tasks from here. In particular, I do see the choice of drivers.

This seems to prove that CUPS is not guilty, but the problem is with system-config-printer.
Monsta
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Re: After UP7, can you add a printer?

Post by Monsta »

I managed to reproduce this bug with Russian locale. Indeed, the right pane is empty, so you can't change the driver. At the same time, the following error message appears in the console:

Code: Select all

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/system-config-printer/newprinter.py", line 3587, in on_tvNPModels_cursor_changed
    self.fillDriverList(self.NPMake, pmodel)
  File "/usr/share/system-config-printer/newprinter.py", line 3539, in fillDriverList
    iter = model.append ((driver + _(" (recommended)"),))
UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte 0xd1 in position 2: ordinal not in range(128)
It has been reported already (see [url=http://bugs.debian.org/718263]this bug[/url]).

In addition, you can't add a new printer (again, tested with Russian locale) because the program [url=http://bugs.debian.org/725799]just freezes[/url].
These two bugs have been merged because they're related.

To work around both problems, you need to run system-config-printer with "C" locale:

Code: Select all

LC_ALL=C system-config-printer
dclement

Re: After UP7, can you add a printer?

Post by dclement »

Monsta wrote:[...]
To work around both problems, you need to run system-config-printer with "C" locale:

Code: Select all

LC_ALL=C system-config-printer
Confirmed, this works.

I'll figure out a way to always start system-config-printer with locale "C", until the bug gets solved for good. (I had sent a bug report, but since it was already known, it has probably been disregarded.)

Thanks, Daniel
Monsta
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Joined: Fri Aug 19, 2011 3:46 am

Re: After UP7, can you add a printer?

Post by Monsta »

Good news: system-config-printer 1.4.3 (which seems to fix this bug and some other Unicode-related ones) entered Testing. You can grab it from there.
Note: because of the dependencies, you'll have to update three packages instead of one:

Code: Select all

python-cupshelpers
system-config-printer
system-config-printer-udev
dclement

Re: After UP7, can you add a printer?

Post by dclement »

Monsta wrote:Good news: system-config-printer 1.4.3 (which seems to fix this bug and some other Unicode-related ones) entered Testing.
I confirm that this works, at least with the French locale. Thanks, Monsta, for signalling this new version.

That's one bug that did not take too long to solve!
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