openSUSE 11.3: printer won’t print some PDFs

So I have a PDF file (it's from the social security administration's BSO, but really, it could have been from anywhere). I opened it with okular and told it to print pages 1-3, then pages 5-6. I waited briefly, then started wondering what was wrong.

I ran yast2 and tried to see what was up... the test page printed successfully (my PDF print jobs were still in the queue) so I knew the printer was fine.

I'm embarrassed to tell you that I next rebooted the computer. My excuse is that this machine does have some hardware issues, but that's lame. Of course the print jobs didn't print, and lpq still showed them there...

collin@p3:/mnt/home/collin> lpq
hp is ready
Rank    Owner   Job     File(s)                         Total Size
1st     collin  246     SGV147.pdf                      852992 bytes
2nd     collin  247     SGV147.pdf                      800768 bytes
collin@p3:/mnt/home/collin> 

I wondered if something was fishy about the printer itself. After failing to remember the command "lpc", some web searching reminded me of it, but it didn't have much to say, either.

collin@p3:/mnt/home/collin> lpc status
Absolute path to 'lpc' is '/usr/sbin/lpc', so running it may require superuser privileges (eg. root).
collin@p3:/mnt/home/collin> /usr/sbin/lpc status
hp:
 printer is on device 'socket' speed -1
 queuing is enabled
 printing is enabled
 2 entries
 daemon present
simplex:
 queuing is enabled
 printing is enabled
 no entries
 daemon present
collin@p3:/mnt/home/collin>

Finally (D’oh!) it occurred to me to look at the log file. Which logfile? There's no "cups" or "lp" in /var/log/messages but there is /var/log/cups, whence

collin@p3:/var/log/cups> less error_log
…
E [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] Job stopped due to filter errors; please consult the error_log file for details.
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] The following messages were recorded from 08:59:17 to 08:59:17
…
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] HWMargins = [ 9.000 9.000 9.000 9.000 ]
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] Error: /undefinedresult in --stringwidth--
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] Operand stack:
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] ()   0   ()
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] Execution stack:
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] %interp_exit   .runexec2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   2   %stopped_push   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   1878   1   3   %oparray_pop   1877   1   3   %oparray_pop   1861   1   3   %oparray_pop   1755   1   3   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   %errorexec_pop   .runexec2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   2   %stopped_push   --nostringval--   --nostringval--
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] Dictionary stack:
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] --dict:1172/3371(ro)(G)--   --dict:0/20(G)--   --dict:77/200(L)--   --dict:66/75(L)--   --dict:18/25(L)--   --dict:0/15(L)--   --dict:0/15(L)--   --dict:8/15(L)--
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] Current allocation mode is local
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] Last OS error: 2
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] GPL Ghostscript 8.70: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] cups_close(0x80ad2dc)
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] prnt/hpcups/HPCupsFilter.cpp 505: cupsRasterOpen failed, fd = 0
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] Print file sent, waiting for printer to finish...
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] Ready to print.
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] End of messages
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] printer-state=3(idle)
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] printer-state-message="Ready to print."
D [09/Feb/2013:08:59:17 -0800] [Job 246] printer-state-reasons=none

Why "Job 246"? Because that was the first print job shown in the "lpq" output above. In case you can't see the messages I marked in boldface above, they were:

• [Job 246] Job stopped due to filter errors; please consult the error_log file for details.
• [Job 246] GPL Ghostscript 8.70: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1

That "Execution stack:" message was actually my first clue that it was ghostscript.

So the problem lay with ghostscript, which didn't grok whatever okular was telling it. The upshot was, I printed the file using the mac's Preview program, which knew what to send to the printer (an hp officejet pro L7650, but I don't think it matters).

What if you don't have a consumer operating system and utilities? It turns out that pdf2ps works and produces ghostscript-able postscript, albeit with some ugly-looking messages:

collin@p3:/mnt/home/collin> pdf2ps SVG147.pdf tmp/x.ps

   **** Warning: Invalid 0.0 font scale given for Tf ****

   **** Warning: Invalid 0.0 font scale given for Tf ****

   **** Warning: Invalid 0.0 font scale given for Tf ****

   **** Warning: Invalid 0.0 font scale given for Tf ****

   **** Warning: Invalid 0.0 font scale given for Tf ****

   **** Warning: Invalid 0.0 font scale given for Tf ****

   **** Warning: Invalid 0.0 font scale given for Tf ****

   **** Warning: Invalid 0.0 font scale given for Tf ****

   **** Warning: Invalid 0.0 font scale given for Tf ****

   **** Warning: Invalid 0.0 font scale given for Tf ****

   **** Warning: Invalid 0.0 font scale given for Tf ****

   **** This file had errors that were repaired or ignored.
   **** The file was produced by: 
   **** >>>> iText 2.1.5 (by lowagie.com) <<<<
   **** Please notify the author of the software that produced this
   **** file that it does not conform to Adobe's published PDF
   **** specification.

collin@p3:/mnt/home/collin>

The resulting file (tmp/x.ps in this case) does print; I think it became a sort of bitmapped file.

collin@p3:/mnt/home/collin> ls -o SVG147.pdf tmp/x.ps
-rw-r--r-- 1 collin  309812 2013-02-09 08:54 SVG147.pdf
-rw-r--r-- 1 collin 2014259 2013-02-09 09:46 tmp/x.ps
collin@p3:/mnt/home/collin>