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

[Goffioul Michael]

> 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?

Is it possible that the kdeprintd daemon (kded module) isn't able
to start a child process anymore? Is it possible for you to "talk"
directly to the module to see if it behaves correctly?
(it used to be possible with "dcop kded kdeprintd")

Michael.