brother hl-5240 problems after upgrade to quantal

Bug #1072915 reported by Jon-o Addleman
14
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
ghostscript (Ubuntu)
Expired
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

After upgrading to quantal, my brother hl-5240 laser printer has stopped working properly. Some files will print, but many won't. It doesn't seem to be application specific - some documents in libreoffice work, some don't, some pdfs work, some don't. But a broken file is always broken, no matter what settings I use for the printer.

When it doesn't work, the file is partially printed, but then stops in the middle of a word. The printer then prints another page with an error. Different files sometimes have different errors though. From one PDF, the error was the following:

ERROR:
invalidfont
OFFENDING COMMAND:
Type1BuildGlyph
STACK:
-mark-
-mark-
-mark-

Another file produced this error:

ERROR:
undefined
OFFENDING COMMAND:
....Undefined
STACK:
441
441
441
-mark-
-mark-
-mark-

I tried removing the printer and reinstalling, but nothing changed. I have the brother-cups-wrapper-laser, brother-lpr-drivers-common, and brother-lpr-drivers-laser packages installed.

I'm also attaching the captured print job data (following instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems) for the pdf that produced the Type1BuildGlyph error above. evince has no trouble displaying this captured data as a pdf though, so I'm not sure if it will show the problem.

I should add that this pdf printed just fine last week before updating, and still works on another computer I tried with an older (11.4, I think) version of ubuntu.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: cups 1.6.1-0ubuntu11
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-17.28-generic 3.5.5
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-17-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu6
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Oct 29 18:03:33 2012
KernLog:
 Oct 28 09:27:20 scaph kernel: [312800.716554] ata1.00: ACPI cmd f5/00:00:00:00:00:a0 (SECURITY FREEZE LOCK) filtered out
 Oct 28 16:40:42 scaph kernel: [313463.508426] ata1.00: ACPI cmd f5/00:00:00:00:00:a0 (SECURITY FREEZE LOCK) filtered out
 Oct 29 09:21:39 scaph kernel: [336474.932441] ata1.00: ACPI cmd f5/00:00:00:00:00:a0 (SECURITY FREEZE LOCK) filtered out
 Oct 29 15:56:37 scaph kernel: [360174.324145] type=1400 audit(1351540597.148:28): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf" pid=7307 comm="apparmor_parser"
 Oct 29 15:56:37 scaph kernel: [360174.325448] type=1400 audit(1351540597.148:29): apparmor="STATUS" operation="profile_replace" name="/usr/sbin/cupsd" pid=7307 comm="apparmor_parser"
Lpstat:
 WARNING: gnome-keyring:: couldn't connect to: /run/user/jono/keyring-kUlxJX/pkcs11: No such file or directory
 device for Brother-HL-5240-series: usb://Brother/HL-5240%20series?serial=A7J824975
Lsusb:
 Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
 Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
 Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
MachineType: LENOVO 170237U
MarkForUpload: True
Papersize: letter
PccardctlIdent:
 Socket 0:
   no product info available
PccardctlStatus:
 Socket 0:
   no card
PpdFiles: Brother-HL-5240-series: Brother HL-5240 BR-Script3
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-17-generic root=UUID=860958bf-acf0-48eb-abb6-acd3022e5a9c ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
SourcePackage: cups
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-10-22 (7 days ago)
dmi.bios.date: 03/31/2011
dmi.bios.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.bios.version: 7BETD8WW (2.19 )
dmi.board.name: 170237U
dmi.board.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.board.version: Not Available
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: No Asset Information
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: LENOVO
dmi.chassis.version: Not Available
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnLENOVO:bvr7BETD8WW(2.19):bd03/31/2011:svnLENOVO:pn170237U:pvrThinkPadX60s:rvnLENOVO:rn170237U:rvrNotAvailable:cvnLENOVO:ct10:cvrNotAvailable:
dmi.product.name: 170237U
dmi.product.version: ThinkPad X60s
dmi.sys.vendor: LENOVO

Revision history for this message
Jon-o Addleman (jaddle) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Jon-o Addleman (jaddle) wrote :

Another type of bad output showed up with another file - in this case, everything printed, but it's a horrible mess. Sections of the image aren't lined up with each other. Attaching a photo of the output (no scanner handy, but this should do to illustrate the issue).

Again, printing with another computer with an older version of ubuntu worked fine. Is there a way to downgrade, until this bug is fixed? It'd be nice to be able to print again....

Revision history for this message
Sean McFarland (sean-mac-always) wrote :

Though this doesn't address the root problem, it may get you by in the mean time. I was having the same problem, i.e.:

ERROR:
invalidfont
OFFENDING COMMAND:
Type1BuildGlyph
STACK:
-mark-
-mark-
-mark-

It seems you can evade this by converting the pdf to a jpg (using GIMP or the utility of your choice). I'm guessing that probably doesn't help you much, but it's all I got :(

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in cups (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Jon-o Addleman (jaddle) wrote :

This bug is still here... any chance of a fix? Anything I can do to debug it?

Even the workaround of loading the offending page into gimp doesn't always work, at least not without reducing the resolution a lot...

Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote :

Please follow the instructions for debugging printing problems on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems

First, check the USB communication with your printer, as described in the section "USB printer does not print or prints garbage".

If this does not help, follow the instructions of the section "PostScript (PDF) printer chokes on the PostScript (PDF) coming from Ubuntu".

Please tell all your results here and attach all files which you obtain. Attach the files one by one, do not compress them and do not package them together. Thanks.

Changed in cups (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Jon-o Addleman (jaddle) wrote :

One other comment - the other computer still seems to work without any trouble. It's running Ubuntu 12.04, while mine, which doesn't work, is running 12.10. I expect it's something with the upgrade from cups 1.5 to 1.6.

Revision history for this message
Jon-o Addleman (jaddle) wrote :

Hi, thanks for the comment.

I tried the USB options just now, but they did not change anything at all.

Going through the other debug steps:

I printed the first page of the attached Score_-_Con_Voce_Festiva.pdf and captured the output. The 'printout' created (also attached as 'print_job_data') is a PDF, and displays just fine in evince.

Then I captured the data going to the printer (saved as 'data_to_printer'). It's an encapsulated postscript file. When I tried sending this printout to the printer (lp -d <queue> -oraw printout), I get the same error as I originally saw. 'gs data_to_printer' displays the file just fine though. Evince displayed it as well (once I renamed it to data_to_printer.eps).

The psdebug option did not change anything at all.

The final step, switching to pdftops, did work though.

Revision history for this message
Jon-o Addleman (jaddle) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Jon-o Addleman (jaddle) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Jon-o Addleman (jaddle) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter) wrote :

Chris, this seems to be one of these printer-does-not-work-with-ghostscripts-postscript problems.

affects: cups (Ubuntu) → ghostscript (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
Jon-o Addleman (jaddle) wrote :

I just tried upgrading to raring, and saw no change. Only the older packages work consistently.

Revision history for this message
cliddell (cjl) wrote :

Could you repeat the "capture the data going to the printer" stage after applying the "psdebug" setting to the "testing" print queue (that is, the new print you created to send the printer data to a file), and attach the output here, please?

Could also confirm which version of Ghostscript is installed ("gs -v" will tell you)?

Thanks.

Revision history for this message
Jon-o Addleman (jaddle) wrote :

Hi, here's the resulting 'printout' file. And I'm using GPL Ghostscript 9.07 (2013-02-14)

Sorry it took so long!

Revision history for this message
cliddell (cjl) wrote :

Thanks. Hmm, the "psdebug" option is not working as I understood it - I *thought* it was supposed to produce very "plain" uncompressed, and (as far as possible) "unfiltered" output. But what you've got out of it is exactly the same as the non-psdebug output.

Till, can you confirm (or deny) what psdebug should do?

Chris

Revision history for this message
mabawsa (mabawsa) wrote :

I am getting this as well on a 4050CDN

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

[Expired for ghostscript (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

Changed in ghostscript (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Expired
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