Very slow CUPS printing.

[VaderDSL]

Just setup CUPS on an old Raspberry Pi 1B, it detects and prints OK, just it is very slow, takes maybe 30 seconds to start the first print, and multiple prints there is a delay of 5-15 seconds or so.

I monitored the PI and it does jump to nearly 100% ram/cpu every time a print begins, so as much as it sounds daft, just want to seek opinions that the slowness is more than likely due to the Pi 1B being underpowered causing CUPS to be really slow?

This is what HTOP shows, it does go to 100% on both ram and CPU I believe, briefly. Presumably when it's processing to send to the printer.

 

[opethdisciple]

Does sound like a bottleneck. I know it has to spool the document so you could be hitting a ram limitation if it isn't CPU.

 

[VaderDSL]

I tried the same CUPS install on a pi4 after posting, it was odd. The same thing happened. CPU usage jumped to 100% and the printing was just as slow. The process was the HP drivers as seen in the screenshot, can only assume that it's something wrong with that driver package. Without installing it CUPS would not print at all sadly. It might just be my printer won't work properly on CUPS.

 

[pete910]

You could try and see if there is an updated pdd file (Driver) for your printer on HP's site. Might fix the issue .

 

[VaderDSL]

You could try and see if there is an updated pdd file (Driver) for your printer on HP's site. Might fix the issue .

Cheers, I ended up trying that also, same results sadly. I had to download the hplip driver package, install it on my Linux partition to extract the updated driver.

I thought it was something to do how pdfs etc get processed, but even with a basic text file with 1 word took ages to spool.

I even added/plugged the printer to my Mac mini via USB and installed via CUPS, and it was doing the same when printing via CUPS

Cheers for the suggestions though, it’s either something I’m doing wrong, or my printer just sucks for turning into a network printer.