In SLES15 SP7 I have configured a printer and a printer class bw-laser that includes that printer.
The default printer is that printer class (in the past there were more printers in that class).
The problem is that a PostScript file (created by GNU Emacs) isn’t printed, and there is no error message on the terminal, nor in the CUPS logs, nor in the syslog.
However I could print the YaST test page successfully, and the page says the printer supports PostScript Level 3.
The PostScript file is properly identified as %!PS-Adobe-3.0, and the trailer says %%Pages: 2.
When running tail -f /var/log/cups/*_log just before starting the print job, I saw:
==> /var/log/cups/error_log <==
I [02/Nov/2026:10:33:14 +0100] [Job 88] Adding start banner page "none".
I [02/Nov/2026:10:33:14 +0100] [Job 88] Queued on "bw-laser" by "windl".
==> /var/log/cups/access_log <==
localhost - - [02/Nov/2026:10:33:14 +0100] "POST /classes/bw-laser HTTP/1.1" 200 306 Create-Job successful-ok
==> /var/log/cups/error_log <==
I [02/Nov/2026:10:33:14 +0100] [Job 88] File of type application/postscript queued by "windl".
I [02/Nov/2026:10:33:14 +0100] [Job 88] Adding end banner page "none".
I [02/Nov/2026:10:33:14 +0100] [Job 88] Started filter /usr/lib/cups/filter/pstops (PID 10941)
I [02/Nov/2026:10:33:14 +0100] [Job 88] Started backend /usr/lib/cups/backend/ipp (PID 10942)
==> /var/log/cups/access_log <==
localhost - - [02/Nov/2026:10:33:14 +0100] "POST /printers/bw-laser HTTP/1.1" 200 42545 Send-Document successful-ok
==> /var/log/cups/page_log <==
bw-laser windl 88 [02/Nov/2026:10:33:14 +0100] 1 1 - localhost xxx.ps - -
bw-laser windl 88 [02/Nov/2026:10:33:14 +0100] 2 1 - localhost xxx.ps - -
bw-laser windl 88 [02/Nov/2026:10:33:15 +0100] total 0 - localhost xxx.ps - -
bw-laser windl 88 [02/Nov/2026:10:33:16 +0100] total 0 - localhost xxx.ps - -
==> /var/log/cups/error_log <==
I [02/Nov/2026:10:33:16 +0100] [Job 88] Job completed.
I [02/Nov/2026:10:33:16 +0100] Expiring subscriptions...
I [02/Nov/2026:10:33:45 +0100] Saving printers.conf...
I [02/Nov/2026:10:33:45 +0100] Saving job.cache...
The interesting fact is the total 0 in the page log, while it previously showed that there were two pages.
I had tried to print the PostScript file using both variants, lpr -oraw xxx.ps and lpr -oraw xxx.ps.
For the raw case the error_log was:
I [02/Nov/2026:10:30:41 +0100] [Job 87] Adding start banner page "none".
I [02/Nov/2026:10:30:41 +0100] [Job 87] Queued on "bw-laser" by "windl".
I [02/Nov/2026:10:30:41 +0100] [Job 87] File of type application/vnd.cups-raw queued by "windl".
I [02/Nov/2026:10:30:41 +0100] [Job 87] Adding end banner page "none".
I [02/Nov/2026:10:30:41 +0100] [Job 87] Started backend /usr/lib/cups/backend/ipp (PID 10803)
I [02/Nov/2026:10:30:43 +0100] [Job 87] Job completed.
I [02/Nov/2026:10:30:43 +0100] Expiring subscriptions...
So what went wrong, and how could I fit it?
