Apsfilter Setup

[Tim Freeman]

>The last time I installed Debian, setting up apsfilter was a piece of 
>cake.  This time when I try to print a test page I get page after page 
>of what looks like the characteristics or printcap of multiple fonts, 
>followed by line after line of letters and numbers that mean nothing to 
>me.  Even after executing apt-get remove apsfilter the above described 
>printing continues until I take the printer off line.  CUPS is not 
>installed on my system, and I don't want to use it.  It is possible that 
>when I installed Debian this time I inadvertently/mistakenly indicated 
>my printer is a PostScript printer, which it is not.  How do I clear the 
>print cache and revisit the printer setup to make sure it is not listed 
>as a PostScript printer?  Thank you in advance for your help.

Hey, on Monday I fought and won this battle, or a similar one, when I
was giving up on CUPS and going back to lpr.  My tale of woe with CUPS
is bug 214670.  Don't use CUPS.

Error #1: I printed a test job, postscript started spewing out, I
stopped the printer, I fiddled with apsfilterconfig, and told it to
print a test page.  Oops, the printer is stopped.  Start the printer.
The next thing that came out was the doomed test job, not the
apsfilter test page.  Very confusing.  Powercycle both the printer and
the computer, and the garbage starts spewing out again!

Solution #1: Use lpq to list the garbage in the printer queue and then
use lprm to remove it before running apsfilterconfig.  It might also
be important to do "/etc/init.d/lpd stop" before running
apsfilterconfig.  I'm not sure.

Error #2: Apparently I had dragged in a new version of gs when I was
attempting to use CUPS, and I was trying to configure it with the old
apsfilter, and they didn't work together.

Solution #2: I went with the testing versions of apsfilter and gs.
These are apsfilter 7.2.5-2 and gs 7.07-1.

Error #3: apsfilterconfig now won't touch /etc/printcap unless you
explicitly tell it to.  I think it did before, but I don't remember
clearly.

Solution #3: Say "I" for "Install" at the right point during
apsfilterconfig, I think.  To verify that you got it right, look at
/etc/printcap.  There should be lines like this at the end

   # APS1_BEGIN:printer1
   blah blah blah
   # APS1_END - don't delete this

I also had to comment out the default entry for "lp" before apsfilter
would make a new one, since it doesn't like to overwrite entries for
existing printers.

Error #4: At one point during my stumbling around trying to get
apsfilter to pass a test, I ran out of paper and then got stuck for a
while because everything hanged.  My printer wants to be touched after
it runs out of paper so it knows it can continue printing, and I
didn't do that

Solution #4: For my printer, I should press the start button to tell
it to try printing on the newly inserted paper.

Error #5: hpijs in stable hangs, according to
http://hpoj.sourceforge.net and my observations.  This is only
relevant if you have an HP printer.

Solution #5: Grab hpijs from testing, version 1.4.1-1.  I eventually
went with gs's native HP printer support instead because it produced
prettier dithering.  gs does a good job for me if I tell it I have a
cdj550.

I also was able to get lpr and samba to work so I can print from my
Windows machines, but it would be off-topic to say how unless someone
expresses interest.

-- 
Tim Freeman                                                  tim@fungible.com
GPG public key fingerprint ECDF 46F8 3B80 BB9E 575D  7180 76DF FE00 34B1 5C78 
Computers don't like it when you anthropomorphize them. -- Chris Phoenix