The Debian package of okular will silently fail to print if the cups-bsd package is not installed. The only indication that there is something wrong is the following the terminal output if okular was opened from a terminal: usage: lpr [-cdfghlmnpqrstv] [-#num] [-1234 font] [-C class] [-i [numcols]] [-J job] [-Pprinter] [-T title] [-U user] [-wnum] [name ...] If okular was not opened from the terminal it just silently fails to print, with absolutely no notification to the user that anything is amiss. This is incredibly aggravating if the printer is somewhere far away. It would be great if okular could display a notification to the user of these printer failures. Okular should be able to figure out that the correct dependencies are not installed, and notify the user that printing will not be possible until they are. This would alleviate a lot of aggravation on the part of the users who don't have the necessary packages installed. Thanks so much. Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. open a document in okular 2. attempt to print 3.
There are Debian bugs about this issue, but their resolution involved making sure that the needed cups-bsd package was included as a package Recommends. They don't solve the overall problem of okular not notifying the user of the problem if the cups-bsd package was never installed for whatever reason: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=748533
Which package provides lpr if not cups-bsd? What is the exit status of that lpr command if passed some random crap in the command line (so it gives you that usage output). You can know the exit status by doing lpr somecrap echo $?
(In reply to Albert Astals Cid from comment #2) > Which package provides lpr if not cups-bsd? There are two packages in Debian that provide a command called 'lpr': lpr and cups-bsd. I don't quite understand the difference between them. From the description: lpr: BSD lpr/lpd line printer spooling system cups-bsd: Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - BSD commands > What is the exit status of that lpr command if passed some random crap in > the command line (so it gives you that usage output). You can know the exit > status by doing > lpr somecrap > echo $? This command does not produce the output that I see from okular: servo:~ 0$ lpr somecrap lpr: cannot open somecrap: No such file or directory servo:~ 1$ So presumably that's not the command being issued by okular.
> So presumably that's not the command being issued by okular. True, you can find the command line okular uses by running kdebugdialog and enabling all okular debug ouput in there and then trying to print. For me it'd be something as lpr -P Deskjet_3050A_J611 -#1 -J entrada_hill_of_freedom.pdf -o media=A4 -o portrait -o sides=one-sided -o outputorder=normal -o Collate=False -o page-left=10 -o page-top=10 -o page-right=10 -o page-bottom=10 -o fit-to-page -o PageSize=A4 -o ColorModel=CMYGray -o OutputMode=FastDraft -r /tmp/kde-tsdgeosDitoDT/okularc11740.ps
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Dear Bug Submitter, This bug has been in NEEDSINFO status with no change for at least 30 days. The bug is now closed as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME due to lack of needed information. For more information about our bug triaging procedures please read the wiki located here: https://community.kde.org/Guidelines_and_HOWTOs/Bug_triaging Thank you for helping us make KDE software even better for everyone!