Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2007 00:24:54 GMT From: "Michael B. Trausch" <michael.trausch@gmail.com> To: freebsd-gnats-submit@FreeBSD.org Subject: ports/113870: USB printing fails w/ FreeBSD CUPS Message-ID: <200706200024.l5K0OsV4039260@www.freebsd.org> Resent-Message-ID: <200706200030.l5K0U5Jl019135@freefall.freebsd.org>
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>Number: 113870
>Category: ports
>Synopsis: USB printing fails w/ FreeBSD CUPS
>Confidential: no
>Severity: serious
>Priority: medium
>Responsible: freebsd-ports-bugs
>State: open
>Quarter:
>Keywords:
>Date-Required:
>Class: sw-bug
>Submitter-Id: current-users
>Arrival-Date: Wed Jun 20 00:30:05 GMT 2007
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator: Michael B. Trausch
>Release: FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE amd64
>Organization:
>Environment:
FreeBSD salt.lan 6.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #0: Tue Jun 19 04:12:27 UTC 2007 root@salt.lan:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC amd64
>Description:
Using FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE, the ability to use CUPS on a USB
printer is broken. I have attempted to report a bug to the
CUPS project regarding it, and when it was discovered that
the problem is not whether or not my printer is bidirectional,
but something else FreeBSD specific, the CUPS author stated
that the bug needed to go through FreeBSD "channels".
The following trouble happens both with a stock kernel (e.g.,
that which comes with 6.2-RELEASE known as GENERIC), and from
a kernel slightly modified to treat the printer as a
unidirectional USB device.
When sending print jobs to the CUPS system, the CUPS
system's USB backend will eventually go idle, not transmitting
print jobs to the printer. This same software works
as-needed on the same hardware when using Ubuntu
server, so it does seem that it is a FreeBSD-specific
problem. I am in the process of attempting to use
the FreeBSD built-in printing solutions to see if I
am able to use that, but would obviously prefer to be
able to use CUPS. However, it is more important that
my server run FreeBSD for other features that come with
the system.
>How-To-Repeat:
Install FreeBSD 6.2, then pkg_add -r cups.
Attach a Lexmark E240 printer to the system (which
uses the pxlmono CUPS driver) and set it up with:
lpadmin -p e240 -v usb:/dev/ulpt0 -m pxlmono.ppd \
-L "Location" -D "Lexmark E240"
Attempt to print test jobs to it both from localhost
and from other networked machines. (Note that the
printer has to be set-up manually on other machines;
FreeBSD's packaged version also doesn't seem to
share the printers' information even when the config
file is set up to do so.)
>Fix:
Unknown. At first, the problem was suspected to be that
the printer reports as bidirectional but really isn't; the
CUPS person created a kernel modification to force the
kernel as a unidirectional device. This patch had no
effect on the problem though it did alter the kernel's
behavior regarding the device.
To provide a comparison with another system which ran on
this same server, Ubuntu Server 7.04 w/ CUPS worked as
expected, after adding the configuration information to
cupsd.conf to enable printer sharing. The Linux kernel
reports the printer as a bidirectional USB device and
seems to treat it as such, and CUPS likes it just fine.
Not knowing anything about the way kernel internals work,
my best guess is that there is something in the dev
interfaces that isn't functioning as expected, OR there is
a bug in CUPS that is specific to FreeBSD (and this bug
exists in packages/ports). I apologize that I can not
offer any more information to attempt to track down the
problem's origin, nor a potential fix.
Added after initial attempt to submit by way of send-pr: It is not a problem with the USB buses, printer, or kernel---FreeBSD's native/internal printing systems/daemons print to my printer just fine, after writing a filter to process incoming things and exporting the LPD printer to my network. So, it appears to be a problem with CUPS' on FreeBSD.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:
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