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I have Brother HL-11 printer that worked fine.

But recently I noticed that I am unable to print files with links in them

I have a big pdf file that could be send to printer with no reaction at all and disappearing from printing queue. Deleting this link caused to get a printable file.

enter image description here

This seems weirdly specific and hope that maybe someone has an idea what is going on.

Extra info as requested:

  • I am using Ubuntu 20.04 (Lubuntu to be extra specific)
  • I tried making simplest possible PDF with just link and it printed fine. So either original file was extra-special or it fixed itself in some update. I will try tracking it down.
  • printer model:

enter image description here

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  • might this be an issue with the postscript driver? There may be something in this reference which provides some clues. Have you tried using a different printer driver or copy/past the text to LO and print from there?
    – graham
    Oct 15, 2021 at 9:54
  • @24601 "copy/past the text to LO and print from there?" - what you mean by LO?
    – reducing activity
    Nov 24, 2021 at 16:53
  • note to self: I started bounty here
    – reducing activity
    Nov 24, 2021 at 16:53
  • LO means Libre Office. Are you using Ubuntu? Which release?
    – Pilot6
    Nov 24, 2021 at 17:03

2 Answers 2

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"... maybe someone has an idea what is going on." I don't, maybe after you provide some info, as mentioned below.

As of now, possible actions are:

  1. Split the pdf in 3: The problematic page, everything before, and everything after. Try printing those three.

Besides, please post the following info (in the body of OP, not in comments). I expect the diagnosis is very much reliant on availability of problematic sample files.

  1. How many pages does the PDF have? Can you share it?
  2. What is the source of the PDF? Can you edit the source and regenerate it?
  3. Does the problem show up with other PDFs that include hyperlinks? Can you generate a simple such example by exporting from LibreOffice Writer, e.g.?
  4. What version of Ubuntu are you using? (lsb_release -a)
  5. What application are you using to view/print the PDF?
  6. What is the exact model of your printer? There seems to be no HL-11.
  7. How did you install the printer driver? Where did you get it from? Which version is it? Is it this written by you? Did you repeat the 2017 procedure in your current Ubuntu? What about: 1) Newer official drivers, 2) This (you may have it already available), 3) the driver from openprinting?
  8. The printer "worked fine"... What does that exactly mean? Were you able to print documents with links before? The same document that you cannot now?

Of course, having another printer to test and compare would help, but that is usually beyond reach.

Note: the PDF splitting can be achieved with several programs 1, 2. I have used PDFtk, for which there are several GUIs (pdfchain, etc.) Others seem to also work: Apache PDFBox, pdfseparate, QPDF, etc.

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  • For workarounds - I edited the file removing all links what also worked.
    – reducing activity
    Nov 25, 2021 at 10:55
  • I have sticker starting from "Brother model HL-11", I attached photo to the question (re "What is the exact model of your printer? There seems to be no HL-11.")
    – reducing activity
    Nov 25, 2021 at 11:02
  • To my deep irritation it now works on the original document. Not sure is it case of PEBKAC or update with bugfix (at least driver, Okular, Firefox, Google Docs could be buggy). It probably was not a loose cable as original file failed many times in row, file without linking was printing fine after that and on repeated attempt original file failed again multiple times.
    – reducing activity
    Nov 25, 2021 at 11:06
  • I will award bounty soon, SE is not allowing me to do this now.
    – reducing activity
    Nov 25, 2021 at 11:08
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I run into it again: in this case I needed to upgrade drivers by going to https://support.brother.com/g/b/downloadend.aspx?c=us_ot&lang=en&prod=hl1110_us_eu_as&os=128&dlid=dlf006893_000&flang=4&type3=625&dlang=true and following instructions to install a new version.

This time some subset of PDF files was affected.

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