[PLUG] Fixing Obscure Printing Problem

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Sat Jan 3 15:03:12 UTC 2009


   I've not received useful responses to my requests for help on various
Slackware mail lists/fora or from the SQL-Ledger mail list. Because we have
a bunch of Perl gurus here perhaps I can get the help I need to find and fix
a specific, but critical, printing problem. Specifically, since my upgrade
to Slackware 12.x I can no longer print directly from SQL-Ledger to the
printer. No invoices, no checks, no reports.

   However, I can print any of these to a PostScript file on disk (but the
checks must be done individually) and use lpr from the command line or from
within gv to print the contents. Displayed web pages in firefox print OK. So
do documents in xpdf, gv, OO.o Word, and text files. Only printing directly
from within SL fails, and only since the upgrade. I'm running
SQL-Ledger-2.8.18, the latest release, and I believe that I upgraded to that
version before the distribution upgrades from -11.0 to 12.0 and 12.1.

   Nothing has been changed by me in /usr/local/sql-ledger/sql-ledger.conf
since 2004. I've not changed printer definitions in /etc/cups/printers.conf.
And, again, there's no problem printing from any other application.

   SQL-Ledger is a series of perl scripts, a language that is as obtuse to me
as Cyrillic writing. I've no idea where to start looking to identify where
the problem might be.

   Later this weekend I'll upgrade to Slackware-12.2 and see if anything
changes. In the meantime, if you experienced SysAdmins can suggest tests to
identify the source of the problem I'd greatly appreciate your help.

Rich

-- 
Richard B. Shepard, Ph.D.               |  Integrity            Credibility
Applied Ecosystem Services, Inc.        |            Innovation
<http://www.appl-ecosys.com>     Voice: 503-667-4517      Fax: 503-667-8863



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