Me too: "Kprinter has stopped working - Unable to start child print process"

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Argh.... I see the very same problem now here too! (Details below)

On Thursday 25 January 2007 02:17, Kurt Pfeifle wrote:
> On Wednesday 24 January 2007 15:27, Andrew Myers wrote:
> > For some reason Kprinter has stopped working correctly. the error 
> > message is:
> > 
> > "Unable to start child print process. Check the command syntax: 
> > cupsdoprint -P 'Oki' -J 'envelope.ps' -H 'localhost:631' -U 'andrew' -o 
> > ' copies=1 multiple-document-handling=separate-documents-collated-copies' "
> > 
> > If I try to run the command at the command line I get:
> > 
> > "This utility doesn't support printing from STDIN "
> > 
> > Cupsd is running, I can look at the admin system on the web, the test 
> > pages print correctly through the KDE control module, and there are no 
> > apparent logged errors, just the error marked above. I can print the 
> > file from the command line using lp/lpr.
> > 
> > If I change the print system to lpr I get a similar error message from 
> > Kprinter.
> > 
> > "Unable to start child print process. Check the command syntax: 
> > /usr/bin/lpr -P 'Oki' '-#1'"
> > 
> > Googling indicates that it may be something to do with an update I may 
> > have installed recently, but restarting the system certainly makes no 
> > difference.
> 
> Which distro, which version, which update, whcih KDE?

This is a SUSE-10.0 with updates from their repositories.

   guest at prnsvrtst:~> kprinter -v
   Qt: 3.3.7
   KDE: 3.5.5 "release 45.2"
   KPrinter: 0.0.1

I don't know which updates were put on this system by my colleagues 
recently (they usually just run "smart upgrade --update"), but it
seems to be the newest of the newest of the newest, because I was
unable to see more available updates when I did run the command 
again.

It's not at all related to CUPS, because it doesn't work for *any*
print subsystem one may select; not even "Use external command". It
also affects all printers, including the virtual ones like "Print to
file (PDF)".

It doesn't matter how kprinter is started: from an application, from
mini-cli or from a konsole shell...

As soon as I click on "Print" (trying to print to PDF), said dialog 
pops up up:

   "
   A print error occurred. Error message received from system:
   
   Unable to start child print process. Check the command syntax: 
   gs -q -dSAFER -dPARANOIDSAFER -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=pdfwrite \
      -sOutputFile=$out{/home/kurt/print.pdf} -sPAPERSIZE=a4 \
      -c .setpdfwrite -f %in 
   "

For now, I'd dismiss the "Check the command syntax" part; it hasn't
changed, and it is correct.

The basic problem is "Unable to start child print process."

Starting kprinter from konsole, yields this warning:

   "kprinter: WARNING: KGenericFactory: instance requested but no 
    instance name or about data passed to the constructor!"

I've no idea what that means. Any hints? Could this be relevant?

I tried to use "kdebugdialog" to enable KDEPrint debugging, but this
does not give me any more konsole output. Am I missing something 
here? Or is it just that the SUSE packages may not have enabled any 
debugging capabilities?

Anyway, kprinter starts up just fine, lets me select a file, but a 
click on "Print" yields the error.

I attached a strace to the kprinter pid just before clicking "Print". 
It did result in a 190 kByte sized file, but didnt' find anything in 
it that pushes my nose on the problem (but then, I'm no expert in 
interpreting strace output...). I can upload it to bugzilla, if anyone 
wants to look at it. (I i-grepped it for "fork" and "child", but there 
is nothing like that contained.)

> > Does any one have any ideas as to why this might occur?
> > 
> > # uname -a
> > Linux ezcool 2.6.17-6mdv #1 SMP Wed Oct 25 12:17:57 MDT 2006 x86_64 AMD 
> > Athlon(tm) 64 Processor 4000+ GNU/Linux

Quite a bit different from mine.