Re: Strange printing problem

[Paul Goyette <paul%whooppee.com@localhost>]

On Thu, 14 Feb 2008, Nikola Lecic wrote:

> From ghostscript-gpl's doc/Issues.htm:
>
>  When pdfwrite device cannot open the output file it fails with:
>    **** Unable to open the initial device, quitting.
>
> (Device here means gs's option -sDEVICE=[...].)
>
> So you can easily reproduce that error by invoking e.g. ps2pdf or
> pdf2ps from a non-writable directory. Or try not to specify
> -sOutputFile, like this:
>
>  % gs -sDEVICE=pswrite abc.pdf (even in a writable directory)
>  % gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite abc.ps
>
> and you will get the same error. Finally, you can try
>
>  % gs -sDEVICE=pswrite -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH \
>       -sOutputFile=/writable-dir/abc.ps abc.pdf
>
> and check if gs is able to write its temporary file.
>
> Possible workaround: try to set TEMP and/or TMPDIR to something
> writable (e.g. /tmp) in your environment.

Hmmm.  Here's what magicfilter does for the postscript doc:

...
# PostScript
0 %! filter /usr/pkg/bin/gs -q -dBATCH -dPARANOIDSAFER -dQUIET -dNOPAUSE
-sDEVICE=ijs -sIjsServer=hpijs -sDeviceManufacturer="HEWLETT-PACKARD" 
-sDeviceModel="deskjet 5600" -dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=612 -dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=792 
-dDuplex=false -r300 
-sIjsParams=Quality:Quality=0,Quality:ColorMode=2,Quality:MediaType=0,Quality:
PenSet=2,PS:MediaPosition=7 -dIjsUseOutputFD -sOutputFile=- 
-sPAPERSIZE=letter -
...

I think that -sOutputFile=- means to write the output to STDOUT, which 
should be writeable!

The same exact command works (without any redirection of TEMP or TMPDIR) 
interactively.  So I'm wondering where ghostscript might be trying to 
put its temp file when invoke as an lpd filter.


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