[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#374142: cupsys: No, it's not just Samba... duplex is busted

Marc Wilson msw at cox.net
Sun Aug 6 22:18:08 UTC 2006


Package: cupsys
Version: 1.2.2-1
Followup-For: Bug #374142

No, it's not just jobs submitted by Samba.

You can explicitly turn on duplexing in the web interface, and then CUPS
will happily duplex anything and everything sent to it.

But it deliberately defeats duplexing options sent to it from
applications.


Example #1... enscript:

rei $ enscript -DDuplex:true thmon.bas -o thmon.ps

Enscript adds the following to the generated PS:

gs_languagelevel 1 gt {
  <<
    /Duplex true /PageSize [612 792] 
  >> setpagedevice
}

Send it to the printer:

rei $ lp thmon.ps
request id is laser-999 (1 file(s))

Look in the output that went to the printer (captured via nc):

gs_languagelevel 1 gt {
  <<
    /Duplex true /PageSize [612 792] 
  >> setpagedevice
}

Yes, the instruction is still there.  But looky looky, what appears a
few lines later in the generated CUPS output:

%%BeginFeature: *Duplex None

  <</Duplex false>> setpagedevice
%%EndFeature

CUPS is *explicitly* disabling duplex, without having been told to on
the command line.



Example #2... a2ps:

rei $ a2ps -1 -r --sides=2 --print-anyway=1 thmon.bas -o thmon.ps

A2ps adds the following to the generated PS:

%%Requirements: Tumble Duplex 

and a few lines later:

{
%%BeginFeature: *Tumble False
  (<<) cvx exec /Tumble (false) cvx exec (>>) cvx exec setpagedevice
%%EndFeature
%%BeginFeature: *Duplex True
  (<<) cvx exec /Duplex (true) cvx exec (>>) cvx exec setpagedevice
%%EndFeature
}

Tumble is disabled, and Duplex is enabled.

Send it to the printer:

rei $ lp thmon.ps
request id is laser-1000 (1 file(s))

Is our duplexing instruction still there?

%%Requirements: Tumble Duplex

Well, the request for it is, and...:

{
%%BeginFeature: *Tumble False
  (<<) cvx exec /Tumble (false) cvx exec (>>) cvx exec setpagedevice
%%EndFeature
%%BeginFeature: *Duplex True
  (<<) cvx exec /Duplex (true) cvx exec (>>) cvx exec setpagedevice
%%EndFeature
}

So is the explicit enabling of it.  However, a few lines later, we again
find:

%%BeginFeature: *Duplex None

  <</Duplex false>> setpagedevice
%%EndFeature

And here we have CUPS explicitly disabling duplex again, without having
been told to.

I understand what's going on here... the web interface is set to
one-sided printing, so CUPS is forcing it to one-sided.  This was NOT
the behavior prior to 1.2, where if duplexing was off, CUPS *left the
generated output alone*.

Please fix this, submit it to upstream and get THEM to fix it, whatever.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.16.27
Locale: LANG=en_US, LC_CTYPE=en_US (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages cupsys depends on:
ii  adduser                  3.96            Add and remove users and groups
ii  cupsys-common            1.2.2-1         Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]    1.5.3           Debian configuration management sy
ii  gs-esp                   8.15.2.dfsg.1-1 The Ghostscript PostScript interpr
ii  libacl1                  2.2.41-1        Access control list shared library
ii  libc6                    2.3.6-18        GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libcupsimage2            1.2.2-1         Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libcupsys2               1.2.2-1         Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  libdbus-1-2              0.62-4          simple interprocess messaging syst
ii  libgnutls13              1.4.1-1         the GNU TLS library - runtime libr
ii  libldap2                 2.1.30-13+b1    OpenLDAP libraries
ii  libpam0g                 0.79-3.1        Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii  libpaper1                1.1.19          Library for handling paper charact
ii  libslp1                  1.2.1-5         OpenSLP libraries
ii  lsb-base                 3.1-10          Linux Standard Base 3.1 init scrip
ii  patch                    2.5.9-4         Apply a diff file to an original
ii  perl-modules             5.8.8-6         Core Perl modules
ii  procps                   1:3.2.7-2       /proc file system utilities
ii  xpdf-utils [poppler-util 3.01-9          Portable Document Format (PDF) sui
ii  zlib1g                   1:1.2.3-13      compression library - runtime

Versions of packages cupsys recommends:
ii  cupsys-client           1.2.2-1          Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - 
ii  foomatic-filters        3.0.2-20060712-1 linuxprinting.org printer support 
ii  smbclient               3.0.22-1         a LanManager-like simple client fo

-- debconf information:
* cupsys/raw-print: true
* cupsys/ports: 631
* cupsys/backend: ipp, lpd, parallel, socket, usb
  cupsys/portserror:
* cupsys/browse: true




More information about the Pkg-cups-devel mailing list