It takes a long time for Firefox 76.01 on Ubuntu 20.04 to bring up the print dialog box.
I have a network printer setup on Ubuntu 20.04 (an lpr printer). In every application, if I select control-P, the print dialog box immediately snaps onto the screen. But on Firefox 76.01, it takes at least 30 seconds for the print dialog box to appear. This is the case every time I select control-P. Printing works as expected, it just takes forever to get the print dialog box to come up. I have tried resetting Firefox and clearing all print-related preferences in prefs.j then restarted Firefox. Nothing seems to resolve this problem. I tried Chrome to see if all browsers were affected and it brings up the dialog box quickly. Has anyone else run into this issue?
Bob Reed
Chosen solution
I have discovered and corrected the issue - and it was not related to Firefox. Apparently, Firefox and Chrome handle printing somewhat differently, so the problem was apparent in Firefox and not in Chrome. When I went into the CUPS server on my Ubuntu box, there were perhaps 25 jobs stuck in the queue. I deleted them. Then I looked at /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf and found that I had uncommented "enable-dbus=no" when troubleshooting a different issue. The combination of the stuck print jobs and disabling the avahi daemon had caused the problem. Now, the printer is displayed immediately and printing works as expected. But thank you for taking the time to read and reply to my question.
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This article describes how to troubleshoot printing problems in Firefox. For general information about printing in Firefox, see How to print web pages in Firefox.
Table of Contents Check Firefox page settings Check other browsers and printers Reset Firefox printer setting Reset all Firefox printer settings Check Firefox page settings If a web page prints incorrectly in Firefox:
Click the menu button Fx57Menu and select Print. Fx57menu-Print The print preview window will appear. From the print preview window, make sure Scale is set to Shrink To Fit. Make sure the Portrait orientation is set. Click Page Setup.... The Page Setup window will appear. From the Page Setup window, click the Margins & Header/Footer tab. From the Margins section, make sure the page margins are set correctly (the default setting is 12.7 mm, or 0.5 in). Click OK to close the Page Setup window and return to the Print Preview window. From the Print Preview window, click Print.... The Print window will appear. Make sure the correct printer is shown in the Name field. Make sure the Print to file setting is not selected. If you made changes, go ahead and attempt to print the page again. If not, follow the instructions below.
Check other browsers and printers You can see whether your problem is with Firefox, your printer or the website you're visiting:
Check to see whether the page prints correctly in another browser (such as Internet Explorer). If the page prints incorrectly in another browser also, then:
there might be a problem with your printer. If you have another printer, try printing the page with that printer. If the second printer prints the page properly, update your printer driver from your printer manufacturer's website. there might be a problem with the page. Contact the website administrator. If the page prints correctly in another browser, follow the instructions below in the following sections.
Reset Firefox printer setting Several printer issues can be resolved by resetting Firefox's printer settings:
Type about:config in the address bar and press Enter. A warning page may appear. Click Accept the Risk and Continue to continue to the about:config page. In the Search field, type print_printer. Click the Delete Fx71aboutconfig-DeleteButton button to the right of the print_printer preference. Click the Firefox menu Fx57Menu and select Exit. When you start Firefox again, try printing the page that you had problems with previously.
Note: In older versions of Firefox print.print_printer was the preference name. The old preference name may exist along with the new name. That old preference can be removed by clicking the Delete Fx71aboutconfig-DeleteButton button. Restart Firefox and print a page after performing the reset. That preference won't reappear. The newer preference will only be available. Reset all Firefox printer settings If the above steps did not work, you may want to reset all of Firefox's printer settings:
Open your profile folder:
Click the menu button Fx57menu , click Help and select Troubleshooting Information. The Troubleshooting Information tab will open. Under the Application Basics section next to Profile Folder, click Open Folder . Your profile folder will open. Note: If you are unable to open or use Firefox, follow the instructions in Finding your profile without opening Firefox. Click the Firefox menu Fx57Menu and select Exit. In your profile folder, copy the prefs.js file to another folder to make a backup of it. Open the original prefs.js file in a text editor (such as WordPad). Remove all lines in the prefs.js file that start with print_ and save the file. If something goes wrong when you open Firefox, close it again and overwrite prefs.js with the backup you generated.
Chosen Solution
I have discovered and corrected the issue - and it was not related to Firefox. Apparently, Firefox and Chrome handle printing somewhat differently, so the problem was apparent in Firefox and not in Chrome. When I went into the CUPS server on my Ubuntu box, there were perhaps 25 jobs stuck in the queue. I deleted them. Then I looked at /etc/avahi/avahi-daemon.conf and found that I had uncommented "enable-dbus=no" when troubleshooting a different issue. The combination of the stuck print jobs and disabling the avahi daemon had caused the problem. Now, the printer is displayed immediately and printing works as expected. But thank you for taking the time to read and reply to my question.