I have one system on my LAN running Ubuntu server 9.10 and three running xubuntu 9.04. I have two printers, one a networked HP7310 and the other an HP1320 which is connected by USB to the Ubuntu server machine and is accessible via that from the other machines.

So far so good, both printers work fine from all machines when used 'normally', i.e. for printing from Firefox or Open Office or whatever.

The problem I have is that when I use lp or lpr from the command line on the 9.10 system the ouput is in a silly typeface and a silly size and the normal command line options have no effect.

So if I do, for example, "ls -al | lpr -P HP7310" on my desktop 9.04 system I get a neat output in Courier 10 on the printer. However if I do exactly the same on the 9.10 system I get a horrible mess in some wierd typeface at about 5 cpi so some of the lines wrap and overprint themselves.

Unfortunately, since the HP1320 is connected via the 9.10 system (it doesn't have its own network connection) all lpr output from any system to it goes via the CUPS on the 9.10 server and has the same bug, prints at about 5cpi.

Ubuntu 9.10 has CUPS version 1.4.1 whereas the older 9.04 has CUPS 1.3.9 so it would seem that there's a bug in CUPS 1.4.1. However I can't find any reports of such a bug in CUPS, does no one print from the command line any more or is my Googling incompetant?

In addition to the incorrect default print size the CUPS 1.4.1 command line appears to ignore any options like "-o cpi=10" which might otherwise be used to work around the problem.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to where to look for a fix or a workaround? I'm in the process of submitting a bug at the CUPS web site as I can't find anything relevant there.