= CUPS – Filing a Bug Report
Brandon Nielsen; Zdenek Dohnal
:revnumber: all
:revdate: 2022-05-15
:category: Printing
:tags: How-to, Bug-Report, Cups


// include::partial$attributes.adoc[]


== Deciding which component

Problems involving printing may relate to several components.

The configuration GUI (See above) is either https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=control-center[GNOME 3 System Settings application] or https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=system-config-printer[system-config-printer]. These packages also provide the printer applet, handle automatic queue creation, and disable/enable queues when USB printers are disconnected and reconnected.

Most GTK+ applications use the GTK+ print dialog. If the problem occurs when using GTK+ applications but not when printing from the command line or from another non-GTK+ application, the problem should probably be reported against the GTK+ version which the application uses. You can find out the version by the following query (*thunderbird* is used as an example of RPM package):

----
$ rpm -q thunderbird | grep gtk
libgtk-3.so.0
----

From the output you can see *thunderbird* uses GTK+ version 3.

If the problem occurs with only one GTK+ application, and other GTK+ applications print fine, the bug should be filed against that particular application.

If the problem only happens with PDF files, the bug may well be in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=poppler[poppler] (the CUPS *pdftops* filter is a wrapper around one of the poppler utility programs).

Report bugs only seen using the *smb* backend against https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=samba[samba].

For bugs only seen when using the *hp* backend, or the hpijs or hpcups drivers, select https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=hplip[hplip] for the component.

For bugs for cups-browsed daemon and its printer discovery, please select https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=cups-filters[cups-filters]

Other possibilities, depending on the problem, include:

* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=foomatic[foomatic] (the Foomatic CUPS filter and driver)
* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=foomatic-db[foomatic-db] (the actual printer database used by Foomatic)
* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=ghostscript[ghostscript] (which converts PostScript to other formats)
* https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=gutenprint[gutenprint] (a driver that supports very many printers)

For anything else, or if you are not sure, choose https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?product=Fedora&component=cups[cups] or use your best guess.

== Other information to include

Be prepared to include some information about your system as well.

=== Before gathering of information

* Please change your OS locale to English.
* Please attach gathered information as archive (example is xref:cups-useful-tricks.adoc#_how_to_compress_files[here], you may need root permissions) to the bugzilla issue.
* Please do not forget to trigger your issue after debug enabling and restarting cups and before information gathering.

===  Information to gather

* the PPD file for the print queue (from the `/etc/cups/ppd` directory)
* the document you are attempting to print -- if the document is large, please try to see if the problem also occurs with a smaller document
* cupsd journal logs when debug level 2 is turned on. See the xref:how-to-debug-printing-problems.adoc#_enable_cups_debug_logging[how-to for turning debug2 on and for getting logs from systemd-journald].
* if the issue is connected to a print job, attach journal logs for this specific job too. How-to get logs xref:how-to-debug-printing-problems.adoc#_get_a_job_log_for_a_specific_job_id[here], example with JID. You can find out JID value by command:

----
$ lpstat -W all
----

Find your job there and JID is a number after '-'.

* If the issue is about f.e. 'printing from evince prints garbage, but printing from libreoffice works', then attach two separate files - first will contain logs when you print from evince, latter logs when you print from libreoffice.
* [filename]`troubleshoot.txt` from system-config-printer (BEWARE: it doesn't contain journal logs - don't forget to attach them too).
* xref:how-to-debug-printing-problems.adoc#_what_make_and_model_is_my_printer[make and model] of printer
* config files - [filename]`/etc/cups/client.conf` (if it contains any changes from default), [filename]`/etc/cups/cupsd.conf`
* if the issue is with cups-browsed and printer's discovery, attach [filename]`/etc/cups/cups-browsed.conf` and cups-browsed logs gained by xref:how-to-debug-printing-problems.adoc#_cups_browsed_logging[this how-to].

Some example documents can be found in the https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Category:Printing_Test_Cases[Printing Test Cases category].

==  Further reading

The https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Printing[main printing page] and the xref:cups-terminology.adoc#_printing[printing terminology page] have more information about how printing works in Fedora.


