Linux – Cups is not printing with “Filter Failed” message — how to get more info

cupslinuxprinting

I have a laser printer (Samsung ML-2010) that is in good condition, it works in Windows and old linuxes, but not with my fresh installation of ArchLinux. The printer is recognised and configured, but not printing, saying about any job:

canceled at
Fri 06 Jun 2014 10:15:26 PM EEST 
"Filter failed"

The question is — where to look at to find more? Cups logs don't seem to have anything related.

Best Answer

For Ubuntu 14.04 users (and maybe others) you cannot add the foomatic-filters as suggested above, as they conflict with the CUPS project's version (cups-filters).

The hint may be in /var/log/cups/error_log. In my case, the output looks like this

[17/Aug/2014:12:47:31 +1000] [Job 83] JCL: 12345X@PJL 
[17/Aug/2014:12:47:31 +1000] [Job 83] <job data> 
[17/Aug/2014:12:47:31 +1000] [Job 83] sh: 1: hpijs: not found 
[17/Aug/2014:12:47:31 +1000] [Job 83] GPL Ghostscript 9.10: Can't start ijs server "hpijs" 
[17/Aug/2014:12:47:31 +1000] [Job 83] renderer exited with status 1 
[17/Aug/2014:12:47:31 +1000] [Job 83] Possible error on renderer command line or PostScript error. Check options.Kid3 exit status: 3

It can be solved with:

sudo apt-get install hpijs-ppds printer-driver-hpijs

Not sure if both are needed, I just picked all hpijs-like things in Aptitude.

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