Doesn't print (large) PDF files

package is surely cupsys

i'm not a developer but... maybe it could help if you said how large (how many pages? text and images or only text?).
could you provide an example PDF file? that would surely help a lot.

yep, something like cupsys or a *-ppd package, better don't ask me...

sure, the file is about 2.5 MB in size; text and loads of images. have a look at http://gdesklets.gotdns.org/Misc/mmdbintroduction-2x2.pdf
the ps file which is much bigger doesn't cause any trouble as far as I noticed!

Just a note: The file was originally a PPT file, which I converted to a PDF file using OpenOffice (PDF-1.4). After that I used pdfnup...
The "original" PDF file won't work either, BTW! So, this problem is either related to OpenOffice (which I don't think at all) or the cups system.

btw, which program are you using to print the PDF?

evince, what else ;-)

Hi there, im just testing pdfnup (included in pdfjam package) and seems to segfault with large files also, maybe it's related but i'm not sure. Oh, and i'm a newbie and this is my first message so don't blame me hard :)

Printing your pdf on a samba laser printer i'v also the same bug.
Printers stop after 4 pages and :
cups error log show
E [24/May/2006:15:07:26 +0200] [Job 31] No ticket cache found for userid=1000
E [24/May/2006:15:07:26 +0200] [Job 31] Can not get the ticket cache for kagou
E [24/May/2006:15:07:34 +0200] [Job 31] /stackoverflow in -file-

Can it be related to how evince handles printing? I have the same issue (Ubuntu Edgy), but only with evince. Adobe Reader prints just fine...

evince will print a 727KB PDF file but not a 1.2MB PDF file. Adobe Reader 5.0 will print the 1.2MB PDF file. OS-6.10

Looks like a problem of evince.

I have a 11,8 MB PDF file which doesn't print at all from Evince (Ubuntu 7.04). I know It's insanely large file, but for that you have to blame Scribus and not me ;) After all, it contains just two small images and some text... Somehow it ended up being almost 12 megabytes. Huh.
Anyway, if I try to print the file, there will be no icon to show that the printing has started and surely nothing will come out of the printer. There was nothing in /var/log/cups/error_log, though.

How can I send the file to be printed using the bash shell, so I could see what happens and, more importantly, what doesn't happen?

Try

lpr filename.pdf

This sends the PDF file directly to CUPS, without Evince trying to convert it to PostScript at first.

"I have a 11,8 MB PDF file which doesn't print at all from Evince (Ubuntu 7.04). I know It's insanely large file, but for that you have to blame Scribus and not me ;) After all, it contains just two small images and some text... Somehow it ended up being almost 12 megabytes. Huh.
Anyway, if I try to print the file, there will be no icon to show that the printing has started and surely nothing will come out of the printer. There was nothing in /var/log/cups/error_log, though."

I have the same problem (doesn't work from Acrobat either!!!). 137 MB ( :=) ) pdf / 2 pages with images / no errors in /var/log/cups/error_log / no indications of an error in the printing dialog (the one from the notification area). The system doesn't seem to send the file to the printer (I know this because the printer led (doesn't blink). The printer is a Lexmark LaserJet E232 on a USB PCL-5e driver.

Just tried to print the same file under Windows XP. Same problem (and the file is actually 137KB). Ignore my 2 comments please. Thanks.

Does printing with lpr works correctly?

I found out that I have a the same problem printing pdf files made from Open Office Impress slides on a HP LaserJet 4350dtn. The file itself is just around 384kB but it cannot even queue using evince. No errors were found in the "/var/log/cups/error_log" file.

When I tried it with "lpr filename.pdf", it sent it to the queue, the printer's processing light is blinking but nothing comes out even after 1 hour and other jobs were blocked. I had to cancel the print job to stop it. The "/var/log/cups/error_log" file showed:
E [02/Aug/2007:19:25:16 +0900] [Job 32] pdftops-options: -cfg /etc/cups/pdftops.conf

The file prints fine on Windows and on FC4 (albeit slowly) which I was using previously.

I think it's a problem when the pdf files are converted to postscript before printing. I downloaded Acrobat Reader 7 for linux and it prints fine.

Trying to convert the file to ps format (pdf2ps) gives an erroneous output file that keeps growing before I canceled it. I'm still able to open the output but it displays wrongly. Opening the file in kpdf or kghostview looks exactly the same as the pdf2ps output. In evince it looks correct but cannot print, as mentioned before.

My guess is probably open office impress sometimes create erroneous pdf files which cannot be handled properly for printing (cannot be converted to ps format correctly) by some applications.

I've also got problems printing from evince to an HP LaserJet 4350 in gutsy (it was fine in feisty). A PDF keeps printing only the first 4 pages (of 15)! Printing the same document from kpdf works fine.

I am experiencing this issue with Evince in Gutsy as well. I was able to get my pdf to print using the lpr command like this "lpr -P myprintername mypdf.pdf" I simply used the same name as the name of the printer in the gnome printer config window.

Does anyone have a fix for this? This is very frustrating.

I have been having the same issue. PDF's made by scanning (11X17) will not print through Evince or acroread. I can print them using LPR, but only 1/2 of the page prints on 11X17. I also can't print images from EOG. I am running gusty on a turion 64X2 laptop.

Update: I can print the PDF using Foxit with Wine, but not with Acroread or evince

I had the problem with a 7 page pdf article from a journal with evince. I think the problem first showed after I printed once just the first two pages of an article. Maybe changing back did not work properly. It kept printing the first two pages and later just the first page. With xpdf the problem persisted. I installed acrobat reader and it worked.

I'm running Ubuntu 7.10.
Brother Laser printer 5250DN
connected via the LPT port

The problems I have is when printing via evince. it's not the size of the PDF that's an issue. It's if the PDF has images in it. When it tries to print a page with an image in it (esp the color images) it bombs out.

Using the command line
 lpr filename.pdf ; all is good.

print from any PDF document viewer in gui I have the problem.

Hope this helps someone figure out what's wrong.

I have had a similar problem using hardy and an epson stylus cx8400 as well as an HP LaserJet 8550 at school. It seems to be independent of the printer since I can reproduce it on just about any printer I try it on. It seems to happen when I print pdfs that are really just scanned images of older papers. However the lpr command mentioned above allowed me to print. Thanks for the tip!

Regards,
Jason

If got a similar problem. I could print every pdf in every application with ubuntu 7.10 on a HP laserjet 2605dn, which is a .ps printer. Since I upgraded to ubuntu 8.4 it doesn't work, which means in most cases the file gets to the cups printing queue but never gets over the status "processing".

There must be a real problem with pdf since the release of ubuntu 8.4. The web is full of bug reports an complains.

I hope to hear from you soon, Thomas

Same problem here with 8.04 and a Brother 5270DN through cupsys (Evince prints only 4 pages of 12-page 380KB pdf).
Kpdf prints without problem.

Not saying anything new, but I also have this problem...

evince doesn't print (even if I convert from pdf2ps only works if I send 10 pages to print, more and it doesn't do anything...)

but "lpr filename.pdf" works fine

could anybody try if that's still an issue in jaunty?

the link to the ONLY pdf is broken.
can anyone please attach a pdf that has this problem?

Ubuntu 9.04, Document Viewer 2.26.1,

I have the same problem. Evince doesn't print large pdf-files. I've got a 1.2 MB file, which it simply doesn't print. The printer defaults and sends the message "broken pipe". Then I split the pdf-files into parts using print to pdf-file. The parts appear to be larger than the original file, because the file properties report 1.5 MB and 1.7 MB. But, the printer does manage these jobs. However, they are printed incredibly slow. It takes minutes for each page to be printed. Finally, the print job documenter reports a file size of 2072k, but the file properties report 1,5 MB.

I'll attach my file and hope somebody can figure this out

Ok, now I tried lpr filename.pdf. This worked instantly. The printer printed instantly and fast and the whole job was printed at once. So this must be evince trying to handle the printing job.

kpdf, which prints without any problems sends PDF to CUPS (as all KDE/Qt applications), as lpr does (lpr does no file conversion at all). Evince converts the PDF into PostScript when printing. As our CUPS is PDF-centric (page management is done on PDF data) it converts everything to PDF. So the best solution would be that evince (or GTK) gets switched to send PDF to CUPS, ideally the unchanged input file.

Well, this problem was first reported in 2006, three years ago. The proposed solution appears to be straightforward. Evince could simply use lpr for printing adobe files. For the application evince, it's a huge bug, because pdf is the standard document format and printing pdfs should be supported flawlessly by a document viewer. For Ubuntu, it's an important problem too since, hey, evince is the standard document viewer shipped with Ubuntu. Viewing and printing pdf documents is something I do quite a lot. I hope the responsible developers address this problem sooner than later ;-)

Regards,

kikl

can you replace your /usr/lib/cups/filter/pdftops file by the attached one (do not forget to make the new file executable with "chmod 755 /usr/lib/cups/filter/pdftops") and print again. Do your files print all correctly now, from all applications?

See more about my alternative pdftops filter in bug 369503.

Hi Till, thanks a lot for your help.

I moved the document using sudo mv.... into the directory /usr/lib/cups/filter/pdftops and renamed the original pdftops into pdftops2. I used the command chmod 755 as indicated by you. When I look at the file properties it says "Allow executing file as program". However, user of the file is not root but me. Furthermore, the file type is "shell script (application/x-shellscript"), whereas the original file type is "shared library (application/x-sharedlib)". These differences probably account for the fact that the change hasn't improved anything. It is probably quite simple for some to change the file type and user of the file. However, it would take me at least an hour to find out using ubuntu-wiki. Maybe you could just briefly tell me the necessary commands.

Thanks a lot

Kilian

kikl, it does not matter who the owner of the filter is (you can change it to root with "sudo chown root.root /usr/lib/cups/filter/pdftops") and it also does not matter whether it is a compiled program or a shell script. My test pdftops is a shell script so that users can simply put it up, independent of their system platform, and onme can simply modify it to do different tests.

As it does not improve your situation it seems that the real problem is Evince, direct printing with "lpr" solves the problem.

So CUPS by itself works. Marking CUPS task as invalid ...

I too can print my files with the lpr command, so evince is to be blamed.

But the same happened with eye of gnome - I downloaded an icc test image (4,5 MB jpg) and opened it with Eye of Gnome. When I tried to print it the process took 6 minutes and died with too many failed attempts. Then I tried with "lpr icc-test-image.jpg" and after two minutes my laser started to print the image.

All in all, I think that printing with Ubuntu feels like a slow process to me. Would it be possible to cut the corners a little?

Mikko

Can you all please try

cupsctl RIPCache=256m

Does this fix your problems of printing large files?

Hi Till,

I'd love to try it, but I'm not sure what you mean. Is this a shell-command you want me to execute or do you want me to edit a text-file, possibly pdftops? Sorry for the stupid question ;-}

Regards

kikl

This is a shell command. Execute it in a terminal window.

ma, 2009-08-10 kello 09:33 +0000, Till Kamppeter kirjoitti:
> Can you all please try
>
> cupsctl RIPCache=256m
>
> Does this fix your problems of printing large files?

This did the trick. Thank you 8)
I tried with a 11,8 MB file and it just printed. Didn't even take too
long in my opinion (30 seconds or so before the printer started its
work).

And I was able to print my large jpg with EOG too. That still took 6
minutes, tough...

Seems like this would solve the problem, but does it cause any problems?
How about those computers that don't have that much memory to spare?
This could be at least our short term solution, before the whole
printing system gets a revamp of some sort =)

Thank you again Till!

Mikko Saarinen

Mikko, thanks for reporting that it works for you.

I have applied this to Karmic, but not hard-coded the number. It will always be set 1/4 of the actual amount of memory. So no problem for computers with less memory (but do not try to use an A0 printer on a machine 64MB of memory).

Anyone not yet on Karmic please apply the command line of my last comment (#41, you must enter it in a terminal window).

Karmic users, please do a full update to get cups 1.3.11-1ubuntu6.

Also the print output of the evince with ships with Karmic got vastly improved, especially the data is sent in the more lightweight PDF format. This should have made the printing of evince much more reliable.

thanks i will try that there are so many people have this problem it must be
a bug

On Tue, Dec 23, 2008 at 3:30 AM, eNz1m3 <email address hidden> wrote:

> Not saying anything new, but I also have this problem...
>
> evince doesn't print (even if I convert from pdf2ps only works if I send
> 10 pages to print, more and it doesn't do anything...)
>
> but "lpr filename.pdf" works fine
>
> --
> Doesn't print (large) PDF files
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/44989
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “cupsys” source package in Ubuntu: New
> Status in “evince” source package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> I noticed that there're already bugs related to what I've noticed, but
> nethertheless, here we go:
> When I'm trying to print a (large) PDF file, my HP Desklets 932C won't
> print it. The trayicon-dialog first says "printing" after some seconds
> there's "job-stopped". It's very strange that printing PS files works,
> although the orientation isn't correct (I used psnup and pdfnup to have 4
> slides on a page).
> Checking /var/log/cups/error_log, reveals:
>
> E [16/May/2006:12:17:15 +0200] [Job 8] /stackoverflow in -file-
> E [16/May/2006:12:17:20 +0200] PID 14220
> (/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip) stopped with status 3!
>
> It's always the same error. This is a really nasty bug, because I have to
> print lots of slides for university. This problem first occured when ubunutu
> added a new version of cups (1.2.0svn worked perfectly).
>
> Note: the original reporter indicated the bug was in package 'cups';
> however, that package was not published in Ubuntu.
>

Απο το ονομα καταλαβενω οτι εισαι ελληνας εγω ρωτησα αρχικα για αυτο το θεμα
μπορεις σε παραπαλω να με βοηθισεις (αν θες και ξερεις κατι παραπανω) βασικα
ειναι προβλημα σε ολα τα pdf που δοκιμασα οποτε δεν νομιζω να ειναι προβλημα
απο κει

On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Dimitrios Symeonidis <email address hidden>wrote:

> the link to the ONLY pdf is broken.
> can anyone please attach a pdf that has this problem?
>
> --
> Doesn't print (large) PDF files
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/44989
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in "cupsys" source package in Ubuntu: New
> Status in "evince" source package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>
> Bug description:
> I noticed that there're already bugs related to what I've noticed, but
> nethertheless, here we go:
> When I'm trying to print a (large) PDF file, my HP Desklets 932C won't
> print it. The trayicon-dialog first says "printing" after some seconds
> there's "job-stopped". It's very strange that printing PS files works,
> although the orientation isn't correct (I used psnup and pdfnup to have 4
> slides on a page).
> Checking /var/log/cups/error_log, reveals:
>
> E [16/May/2006:12:17:15 +0200] [Job 8] /stackoverflow in -file-
> E [16/May/2006:12:17:20 +0200] PID 14220
> (/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip) stopped with status 3!
>
> It's always the same error. This is a really nasty bug, because I have to
> print lots of slides for university. This problem first occured when ubunutu
> added a new version of cups (1.2.0svn worked perfectly).
>
> Note: the original reporter indicated the bug was in package 'cups';
> however, that package was not published in Ubuntu.
>

Γεια σου Νεφέλη, ναι Έλληνας είμαι.
Σε τι ακριβώς θέλεις να σε βοηθήσω; Η λύση που πρότειναν φαίνεται να δουλεύει:
cupsctl RIPCache=256m
(τρέχεις αυτή την εντολή σε ένα terminal)
Βέβαια με κάθε επανεκκίνηση θα πρέπει να ξανατρέχεις την εντολή αυτή.
Αν την δοκιμάσεις και σου λύσει το πρόβλημα, να την βάλεις στο αρχείο
/etc/rc.local

Πες μου αν χρειάζεσαι επιπλέον βοήθεια...

Dimitris Symeonidis
"If you think you're too small to make a difference, try sleeping with
a mosquito!" - Amnesty International

On Mon, Aug 17, 2009 at 21:14, nefeli<email address hidden> wrote:
> Απο το ονομα καταλαβενω οτι εισαι ελληνας εγω ρωτησα αρχικα για αυτο το θεμα
> μπορεις σε παραπαλω να με βοηθισεις (αν θες και ξερεις κατι παραπανω) βασικα
> ειναι προβλημα σε ολα τα pdf που δοκιμασα οποτε δεν νομιζω να ειναι προβλημα
> απο κει
>
> On Mon, Apr 20, 2009 at 5:55 PM, Dimitrios Symeonidis
> <email address hidden>wrote:
>
>> the link to the ONLY pdf is broken.
>> can anyone please attach a pdf that has this problem?
>>
>> --
>> Doesn't print (large) PDF files
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/44989
>> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
>> of the bug.
>>
>> Status in "cupsys" source package in Ubuntu: New
>> Status in "evince" source package in Ubuntu: Confirmed
>>
>> Bug description:
>> I noticed that there're already bugs related to what I've noticed, but
>> nethertheless, here we go:
>> When I'm trying to print a (large) PDF file, my HP Desklets 932C won't
>> print it. The trayicon-dialog first says "printing" after some seconds
>> there's "job-stopped". It's very strange that printing PS files works,
>> although the orientation isn't correct (I used psnup and pdfnup to have 4
>> slides on a page).
>> Checking /var/log/cups/error_log, reveals:
>>
>> E [16/May/2006:12:17:15 +0200] [Job 8] /stackoverflow in -file-
>> E [16/May/2006:12:17:20 +0200] PID 14220
>> (/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip) stopped with status 3!
>>
>> It's always the same error. This is a really nasty bug, because I have to
>> print lots of slides for university. This problem first occured when ubunutu
>> added a new version of cups (1.2.0svn worked perfectly).
>>
>> Note: the original reporter indicated the bug was in package 'cups';
>> however, that package was not published in Ubuntu.
>>
>
> --
> Doesn't print (large) PDF files
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/44989
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Can you please speak English? Thanks.

I am sorry i'm not so good at English so i didn't understand exactly what i
have to do

On Thu, Aug 20, 2009 at 7:01 PM, Till Kamppeter <email address hidden>wrote:

> Can you please speak English? Thanks.
>
> --
> Doesn't print (large) PDF files
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/44989
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in “cups” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released
> Status in “evince” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released
>
> Bug description:
> I noticed that there're already bugs related to what I've noticed, but
> nethertheless, here we go:
> When I'm trying to print a (large) PDF file, my HP Desklets 932C won't
> print it. The trayicon-dialog first says "printing" after some seconds
> there's "job-stopped". It's very strange that printing PS files works,
> although the orientation isn't correct (I used psnup and pdfnup to have 4
> slides on a page).
> Checking /var/log/cups/error_log, reveals:
>
> E [16/May/2006:12:17:15 +0200] [Job 8] /stackoverflow in -file-
> E [16/May/2006:12:17:20 +0200] PID 14220
> (/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip) stopped with status 3!
>
> It's always the same error. This is a really nasty bug, because I have to
> print lots of slides for university. This problem first occured when ubunutu
> added a new version of cups (1.2.0svn worked perfectly).
>
> Note: the original reporter indicated the bug was in package 'cups';
> however, that package was not published in Ubuntu.
>

The above fix worked for me for printing a PNG image of 610.6 kb, taking little over 5 minutes to print (I couldn't print it at all before the change in config)

But then I tried printing a 1.3 Mb RTF and the issue was back! (a file with only text, tables and a small logo)

I raised the number to 450m and still can't print it. How much memory is required to print such a file? i'm thinking 450mb is too much.

I'm running Karmic on a 3-year-old PC with 600mb RAM, so 450mb is 75% if the pc memory to print a rather small file... doesn't make any sense to me.

hi there,

I'm running Lucid Lynx 10.04 and have exactly the same problem printing large PDF's with evince. It says the job is too big even though the PDF file is only 4MB and my printer has 32MB of RAM. the problem seems to be that evince is trying to reprocess the file and it makes it very large, in my case, too large for the printer's RAM to handle.

The fix suggested by Till:

Till Kamppeter wrote on 2009-08-10: #41
Can you all please try

cupsctl RIPCache=256m

Does this fix your problems of printing large files?

did the trick for me for smaller files but for a 4.5 MB one that I have it ballooned up to 36217k which is too large for my printer. It also doesn't work for printing documents like .doc from Google's online document viewer.

Can the command be modified to make this work? I'm surprised at such a glaring bug in Ubuntu for so many years. I moved to it from Windows Vista and I've been very happy otherwise but this is a glaring issue.

Kurt

the lpr command seems to work albeit slowly for a 4.7MB scanned document that I'm printing.

Is there not a better way to get things to print? I have 32MB of RAM in the printer so this seems rather clunky. Also large scanned PDF files seem to take a long time to print. I'm getting 1 page per minute for a large 20page file.

Thank you,

Kurt

I checked the print manager and the 4.7mb PDF document its printing is showing as 4855k. So this seems to be working and not converting it to a much larger document for printing.

Kurt

A further note. I installed okular and made it the default for printing PDF's. It seems to have solved the problem.

Best regards,

Kurt

Simply try a higher value, for example

cupsctl RIPCache=512m

If you upgrade to Maverick, you do not need to adjust RIPCache any more. There Ghostscript manages the memory automatically. On Maverick (or newer) run

cupsctl RIPCache=auto

to cancel any former memory setting.

In general upgrading to a newer Ubuntu will always help, as we have fixed a lot of resources problems with Ghostscript and other print filters.

For further discussion, join bug #668800.

Bug,

I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.

- Nefeli

Nefeli Tralala
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When I want to print some of the pages, which have pictures, from my latex-compiled pdf they dont print correctly, the picture is not printed,

runing pdf2ps and then ps2pdf on the pictures, before compiling by latex, solved the problem for some pages but not for all of them, any solution?

I know this is not related to this bug, but I explain the problem, in case it helps,

I specifically have problems with figures which were originally saved in pdf version 1.5 format or pdfs which have rotated (slanted fonts) exported from inkscape and included in latex.