Problematic Canon Printers

PROBLEMATIC CANON PRINTERS

Most Canon printers work painlessly in Linux and are automatically set up . . . some however do give a few problems.
Here are 2 ways people have been able to solve the problems:

CASE 1: Canon BJC2555SP Printer connected to Parallel Port in Slackware

Our good friend David struggled his way through getting his Canon Parallel Printer working in Slackware. Here is his solution to 2 problems he encountered:

QUOTE

CUPS Parallel Port lp and Slackware - Linux.

Slackware v10: To enable CUPS to recognize the Parallel Port 'lp' in this Distro you will need to edit the following file with a text-editor.

/etc/rc.d/rc.modules and go to the headers indicated here by the ####, and activate these two lines (Remove the red #) and 'Save'.

QUOTE

#### PC parallel port support ###

# # /sbin/modprobe parport_pc io=0x378 irq=7

#### Parallel printer support ###

# /sbin/modprobe lp

Ensure the Printer is plugged-in and turned on, then re-boot. This should 'detect' both the port and the printer. You will still need to manually install the Printer drivers.

Canon BJC255SP and Slackware - Linux.

There is a lot of information on the Net that refers to the .pdd file Canon-BJC-255SP-bjc250gs.ppd as being suitable for for the above printer using Linux. I have found that NOT to be the case when activating the printer using Slackware CUPS.

The .pdd file Canon-BJC-600-bjc600.ppd is used by Mandrake, SuSE and Yoper for the above printer, and I found it was also the suitable one for Slackware. But! it has to be imported into Slack using the CUPS 'other' option.

If you need this .ppd file, you can try the link below, or find it in the /etc/cups/ppd directory of other Distros.

http://www.linuxprinting.org/

Do NOT try to cut-&-paste these files as they have embedded Codes / Commands in them and they WILL be corrupted. Download them or copy to floppy if 'borrowing' them locally from another Distro.

Edit:
Also, don't be fooled by the name BJC-255SP being used by CUPS as the 'Installed' drivers. The Distro gets this title / name from 'reading' the printer BIOS and appends it to CUPS. And that is why it is sometimes confusing as to what .ppd file is the proper one to use for a particular Distro - Printer combination.

Thanks David, this should help a good few other penguins to get their printers to do the job.

CASE 2: Printer Drivers for Canon i printers:

You can get official Canon drivers for your i series printers here:

ftp://download.canon.jp/pub/driver/bj/linux/

You need the "bjfiltercups"-rpm and the matching "bjfilterpixusXXXi"-rpm ( where XXX is the model number of your printer and "pixus" is the way they call those printers only in Japan )

When during install you get dependency problems relating to "libpopt.so.0" install the "popt" package and do

CODE

# ln -s /usr/lib/libpopt.so.1 /usr/lib/libpopt.so.0

And try the install again.

When both packages are installed successfully you have to restart cups and set your printer up to use the new drivers.

Source: linuxforen.de

Bruno

PS: Debian packages for Canon printers: See Here
Also, Ubuntu specific: Canon PIXMA IP4000 drivers ( and others ) Here

-- Nov 10 2004 ( Revised Jul 24 2006 ) --