printer failure - wine program & ghostscript-8.64/8.71

Problems and successes with specific brands/models of printers
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davids45
Posts: 1326
Joined: Sun 26 Nov 2006, 23:33
Location: Chatswood, NSW

printer failure - wine program & ghostscript-8.64/8.71

#1 Post by davids45 »

G'day,
I have been having lots of recent Pup failures to print maps from a Windows program running under Wine (1.5.11) that had been OK with some earlier Pups.
The printer is a Fujixerox Docuprint C1110 colour laser which has a Linux driver from Fujixerox. It is wired-networked and usually needs to be woken up from its 'Power Saver' to print.

Having about a dozen mostly recent Full Pups on my two-hard-drives computer, I spent some time seeing how these were set up with CUPS and which Ghostscript version (# gs -version) they came with, and how they fared printing a vector-graphics map of file size about 112MB.
I watched the processes widget and two-bar CPU widget during the attempts to print, and had CUPS open on the fujixerox printer status as well.

Some Pups opened 1.3.11 CUPS but then showed a later version (e.g. 1.4.4) when looking to 'Administration' to see a printer's set-up and status. This CUPS version jump did not seem to matter.

All gs versions took all of a CPU for many seconds in processing the 112MB file once handed over from wine (from ocad.exe). Some Pups also used up the other available CPU with 'sockets' taking all that CPU.

In summary (zip attached of tests), all Pups with gs-8.64 failed to print anything or get as far as waking up the printer, with eventually a 'broken pipe' message in CUPS. Also gs-8.71 failed (this is in 2 Pups). 'Resuming' printing from CUPS after a fail did not help.

Pups with gs-9.05 (1) and ESP-8.15.4 (3) all printed without problem.

I found forum-member Dingo had provided some gs-9.05 pets (thanks, Dingo) so I downloaded his Slacko pet and over-wrote with gs-9.05, all the gs-8.64 files in three of my non-printing Slackos.

All these Slackos now print maps from wine, without 'broken pipes'.

Very limited testing of some Frugals seemed to show the same gs-8.64 failures but I have not yet switched to gs-9.05 with any failing-8.65 Frugal.

I hope this may help anyone else with odd printing needs who experience odd results with odd Pups.

So far, I have not found an issue with my gross gs replacement of 8.64 by 9.05, but have not printed much normal stuff yet. Fingers crossed, or I will have to go back to Windows to print my maps.

David S.
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zip of a pdf of a spreadsheet with test details
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davids45
Posts: 1326
Joined: Sun 26 Nov 2006, 23:33
Location: Chatswood, NSW

Frugals now OK with full gs-9.05

#2 Post by davids45 »

G'day again,

While it is still too hot outside to do anything (last New Year's Day was also too hot if I recall correctly), I've looked at a couple of my many non-printing Slacko Frugals.

Copying the gs-9.05 files to /usr/bin and /usr/share/ghostscript fixes the Slackos failure to print from wine on my Fujixerox.

But curiously, I just now see virtually nothing in the original /use/share/ghostscript/8.64 directory, and in /usr/bin, the file 'gs' is just a symlink to a relatively small "gsc" executable file which isn't in the gs-9.05 pet as far as I can see.

So I'm guessing gs-8.64 has been modified (cut down) for Puppy in such a way to prevent my particular and peculiar printing job?

David S.

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