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I'm trying to print a pdf onto paper programmatically, using lp from a raspberry pi as part of an application for work. The PDF comes out of the printer looking like completely random unicode nonsense, and it prints page after page, even though the input is a single-page pdf document.

I installed two printers, a brother and a canon, using the cups web interface with default options.

I did notice the following:

$> lpstat -a
Brother_HL-L6200DW_series accepting requests since Mon 18 Nov 2019 12:54:20 PM MST
Canon_MF642C_643C_644C accepting requests since Tue 26 Nov 2019 09:34:52 AM MST
PDF accepting requests since Wed 20 Nov 2019 02:10:44 PM MST

$> cupsfilter --list-filters -d Canon_MF642C_643C_644C race_sheet_281.pdf 
gziptoany

$> cupsfilter --list-filters -d Brother_HL-L6200DW_series race_sheet_281.pdf 
gziptoany

Both of these printers are connected over the network, btw.

It seems at cursory glance that the proper filters are not being used, but I did notice there is a plethora of filters in /usr/lib/cups/filter:

ls /usr/lib/cups/filter/
bannertopdf    commandtocanon  emftopdf      gziptoany      imagetoubrl         pdftopdf      rastertoepson           rastertopclm  svgtopdf          texttopdf    vectortoubrl
brftoembosser  commandtoepson  foomatic-rip  imagetobrf     imageubrltoindexv3  pdftops       rastertoescpx           rastertopclx  sys5ippprinter    texttops     wmftopdf
brftopagedbrf  commandtoescpx  gstopdf       imagetopdf     imageubrltoindexv4  pdftoraster   rastertogutenprint.5.3  rastertopdf   textbrftoindexv3  texttotext   xfigtopdf
cgmtopdf       commandtopclx   gstopxl       imagetops      mupdftoraster       pstops        rastertohp              rastertops    textbrftoindexv4  vectortobrf
cmxtopdf       commandtops     gstoraster    imagetoraster  musicxmltobrf       rastertodymo  rastertolabel           rastertopwg   texttobrf         vectortopdf

I'd like to print to either printer, but I'm not at leisure to just test this thing all day because the printers and the pi are in a different state and we have to ask our very busy client to stand at the printer every time we test.

Is this just a matter of finding drivers? If not, is it a matter of configuring the printer to use the proper filters?

Thank you in advance!

James M. Lay
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1 Answers1

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I've had similar setup (Pi working as a print server and about 8 network printers on it - various manufacturers) and some of them didn't want to print correctly (gibberish on the printouts).

After trying different drivers it all started to work (but it took sometimes many tries and in some cases more generic than specific drivers worked).

Wojtek_B
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