First off, to verify we are still talking about USB install?
The cups server ( localhost:631) should set up the cupsd.conf file.
I feel really dumb here because I didn’t bring this up earlier. If you trying to do a network install, and your computer has a firewall, one needs to open up port 1900 on the computer. Port 1900 is the printer to computer handshake path.
I have not installed a USB printer for years, and I have never installed a printer on KDE, so we are getting out of my wheel house.
I have one last thing for you to try, then I’m over my head. @joekamprad has a wiki page for printers. In it he has a section of extra steps for QT environments, namely Plasma. Try going through the beginning of this wiki page and see if something there fixes it. https://endeavouros.com/docs/hardware-and-network/printers/
I hope this gets it. If it ends up being systemctl commands, I will be red faced for sure.
First, thank you sincerely for your efforts. I am happy to report success with this, and it turns out not to have been (for me) an obvious solution. The clue came from the most recent error in /var/log/cups/error_log. The only apparent error was the message,
Grayscale/monochrome printing requested for this job but Poppler is not able to convert to grayscale/monochrome PostScript
A little google-foo led me to this link, https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=950690
where there was a discussion about recent bugs in the current cups-filters package related to some Brother .ppd postscript drivers. That got me thinking that I should try to use a different driver than the designated .ppd for this machine.
Blindly, I chose a printer close in model number to mine, the Brother MFC-8820D with the BR-Script3 driver, and it worked immediately.
So, the issue appears to be in the current cups-filters package and the .ppd file for this printer. I don’t know that this driver is optimal (I’ll play with that for awhile more), but I now have a working printer. Thanks for brainstorming with me and giving me a sounding board to play against.
To answer the last round of questions, my config is a true USB install, not a network install, so no firewall issues or ports to be opened.
Again, thank you sincerely. Glad to have this one fixed so I can get back to work!
I’m glad you fixed it. I don’t think that would have been an obvious solution for anyone.
Looks like you are getting to be an expert in analyzing log files.
