On Sat 21 Mar 2026 at 05:54:48 (-0400), Haines Brown wrote: > On Fri, Mar 20, 2026 at 10:24:12AM -0500, David Wright wrote: > > On Wed 18 Mar 2026 at 16:50:24 (-0400), Haines Brown wrote: > > > In a new installation, when printing with lpr the output is > > > landscape when it should be portrait. > > > > > > When CUPS prints its test page, it is normal (portrait) > ... > > > I tried: > > > > > > $ lpoptions -p HP_LaserJet_Pro_M428f_M429f_8264A8 -o > > > orientation-requested=portrait > > > > What effect does it have in the configuration file. Indeed, what are > > the contents? > > Rather long, but you asked. I leave out commented lines. > > # nano /etc/cu;s/cupsd.conf
Unfortunately, this file is for CUPS to schedule printing etc, rather than configuring the appearance, which is the job of filters. The configuration files for lpoptions are at the foot of man lpoptions, ~/.cups/lpoptions and /etc/cups/lpoptions. (I don't know whether options you set are merely transcribed into the files, or interpreted and validated first.) > > If nothing else works, perhaps read: > > > > https://wiki.debian.org/CUPSPdfToPdf > > I did so. Among other things. these commands on a simple file are > both printed landscape. > > $ lpr -o landscape test.txt > $ lpr -o portrait test.txt AFAIK -o portrait is meaningless to CUPS, but portrait is the default anyway. > My ppp directory hold three directories: Do you mean /etc/cups/ppd/ ? > 3) a cupsfilters directory that holds five ppd files. None specifically for > my printer > but thhre is a Generic-PDF_Printer-PDF.ppd and so I look at it. It's a good idea to post a command and the output, so we agree on what we're discussing. Five files seems somewhat excessive, unless they're variants of each other (like colour/greyscale). This isn't /usr/share/ppd/cupsfilters/ is it. I have three files in /etc/cups/ppd/. Two correspond to the printers on our network, and one is for my (default) PDF queue. Most things I print go to a PDF file and not a physical printer. Installing printer-driver-cups-pdf gives you that facility. -rw-r----- 1 root lp 8942 Mar 21 00:04 Brother_HL_L2390DW.ppd -rw-r----- 1 root lp 19204 Mar 21 00:04 Officejet_Pro_8500_A910_3C92E5.ppd -rw-r----- 1 root lp 22243 Jan 4 19:35 PDF.ppd (I guess that some cron job touches these files in the middle of the night, perhaps having checked the printers were still there.) > Every line is preceeded by an asterisk. It that a comment symbol? No, you can see from the plain test at the start of the file that % is the comment character. > Stanzas sometimes start * ..." PickOne. > Dos this mean remove the astserisk to make a line active? > If do, then the file has no active lines. No, I have no idea what happens if you screw up PPD files' format. PickOne just means you can't set more than one choice from the list. > One line is: *LandscapeOrientation, : Plus90 (Sort of.) ↑↑↑↑ > This this mean 90° from horizonaal? Does this line need its > asterisk rmoved for portait orientation? No, it's the direction that individual landscape pages are (auto)rotated so that they match the paper. The default is Minus90 (ie clockwise). Portrait pages remain portrait. It's documented in the reference I gave. So it might be an idea to ls -l the contents of /etc/cups/ppd/ just as a check. Cheers, David.
