HOWTO: Canon MX700 over network on amd64

[cumber]

I just managed to get my networked Canon MX700 setup and printing on my amd64 Gentoo install, and as I had to do quite a bit of googling and reading to do it, I thought I'd write the steps I used down here. Hopefully if I've made a mistake in this writeup or got things working by accident due to the sequence of missteps I made, we can find that out and correct this.

Before setting this printer up on my Gentoo machine I had already set it up on a windows XP machine, following the instructions that came with the printer for setting it up for network use for the first time. I don't know whether or not this procedure would work if you haven't already done that.

EDIT 10th March 2010: I've just set this up again on another amd64 Gentoo box, and the situation has changed somewhat. Mainly in that there are overlays that provide most of the ebuilds we need, which simplifies the process a bit. Unfortunately the one ebuild that we still need to get from a bug report needs some tweaking before it will work. I've updated the instructions to reflect the process that worked for me at the time of writing.[/b]

1. Install the dev-zero and calculate overlays, using layman.
   
   
2. Add net-print/cups-bjnp and app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-bjdeps to your package.keywords.
   
   
3. Make an overlay directory for net-print/cnijfilter. Download the ebuild described here (note that this bug is cnijfilter-2.80, there are ebuilds for several other versions in the gentoo bugzilla, but it seems that the version numbers come from Canon and do not indicate "improvements" as they get higher, they support entirely different sets of printers). There are a couple of changes you'll need to make before you can use it though. The download links listed in the ebuild don't work; you'll need to replace them with the link mentioned in the comments on the same bug page. You'll also need to replace the dependency on virtual/ghostscript with app-text/ghostscript-gpl. It seems there's no longer a ghostscript-gnu, so there's no virtual to depend on either of the two anymore. Digest the ebuild, and add it to your package.keywords. Also add the use flag mp520 to your package.use for cnijfilter. This makes cnijfilter support a different printer, which seems to work for the MX700 anyway. Note that on amd64 you can't use the servicetools use flag, as the tools this provides need extra x86 compatibility libs that aren't available at the moment (as far as I could find).
   
   
4. emerge -av cnijfilter cups-bjnp
   
   
5. Get a PPD file for the Canon MX700. I found it in this post on the Ubuntu forums. Save it somewhere (remove the .txt extension).
   
   
6. Restart (or start) cups. Open a web-browser and go to localhost:631. On the Administration tab, hit "Find New Printers". Your printer should be detected. Click "Add This Printer". Change the labels as you want, then hit continue. Use the "Or Provide a PPD File" option at the next screen and select the PPD file downloaded in step 7. Hit "Add Printer".
   

I haven't tested, but a simpler version of the above should work for x86. You wouldn't need app-emulation/emul-linux-x86-bjdeps, and I believe therefore wouldn't need the calculate overlay either.

I should also add that I found it useful (at some point after writing the initial version of this howto) to make sure my printer was assigned a fixed IP address by the local router. Unfortunately this was so long ago that I can't remember if that step was necessary or just convenient.

Your printer should now be working. Hope this helps people.

[NeddySeagoon]

Moved from Kernel & Hardware to Documentation, Tips & Tricks.
Its a solution, not a problem
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Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

[thdrcat]

worked great, thanks very much for your efforts.

[fbonelle]

Hi,

Here is the code of an ebuild (cups-bjnp-0.5.4.ebuild) :

[neepie]

Thanks. This worked for me on a x86.

I just skipped step 5.
And in stead of step 3 I just did a "make install" (as root of course)

[cumber]

I just ran through this process again on a new box, and have updated the original post to reflect the current state of things. There's no longer a need to edit makefiles and manually compile things, and most of the ebuilds are available from overlays, so the whole process is a lot simpler.