[SOLVED] Printing fails or produces all black page

[Jaycoke]

When I try to print a test page or from Firefox I get the following error.

/usr/lib/cups/filter/pstoraster failed

OpenOffice writer, and KWrite both produce an all black page.

Printer model is an HP Photosmart C5100 series
Running PCLOS 2010 up to date.

Cups version is 1.4.4-3
hplip version 3.10.5-2

[Jaycoke]

Not sure what I did, but now when I try to restart the service 'cups' (using PCC) I get the error

Stopping CUPS printing system: [FAILED]
Starting CUPS printing system: cupsd: Child exited on signal 15!
[FAILED]
Re-enabling disabled print queues:
lpstat: Connection refused

[Ramchu]

The 1st. thing I would try, would be to remove and then reinstall your printer.

Hope this helps !

[Jaycoke]

I tried deleting the printer, unplugging it and completely removed all packages related to cups, and printing. When I re-installed task-printing I got an error relating to out of space on /var, so I checked it and sure enough /var was packed tight. I had set Synaptic to save downloaded packages a while back, and forgot about it.    So I cleared the Synaptic cache.

Now when re-installing the printer I see that there are two print drivers available...

hpcups 3.10.2 (en)
hpcups 3.10.2 rc1.9 (en)

Both of which work... auto-magically every thing seems to work fine!