Canon Printer

lawa42 · Posted: Thu Oct 28, 2004 10:26 am Post subject: Canon Printer

Hi!

Our Office printer is a canon GP405. Which print driver (ppd, ghostscript-version, cups-version, whatever) do I have to use to get a useable print out. I tried several things but all I get is Postscript code instead of nice text and images.

Any one got this printer running

tia Gregor

bavstan · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 21 Location: Switzerland

As far as I could tell that copier supports postscript. Therefore I'd give cups a try: 'emerge cups' and start it '/etc/init.d/cupsd start'
I prefer the web-based management to manage printers in cups, but command line is available too.
Use your web-browser to open http://localhost:631 and click on 'Manage Printers' and then on 'Add Printer'. You'll then be asked for your password. Enter 'root' and your root password.
On the next page enter something sensible for your Printer. You'll be needing the Name to select the printer later ('lp -d gp405') so don't enter anything fancy there.
On the following page I'd give 'LPD/LPR Host or Printer' a try.
Next enter the IP-address of the laser: 'lpd://192.168.X.X' or 'lpd://gp405.mycompany.com' if you have a DNS name set up for that printer.
On the next two pages select 'Raw' and 'Raw Queue'

Hopefully your printer should work now. Try

lawa42 · Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 11:43 am Post subject:

Hi bavstan

I tried that setup too, but I stopped the printout because the printer said it is going to print 9 pages (propably more) when I tried to print the test page. I found a ppd file for this printer but when I use that one I can configure a lot of options like duplex and so on but still the printer only prints the postscript code instead of the document.

Gregor

bavstan · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 21 Location: Switzerland

Maybe your printer doesn't support postscript then, or it is turned off. To confirm this you might want to print a configuration page via the printer's menu, if the machine supports it -- most lasers do.

You don't necessarily need a specific PPD for a postscript printer. The generic one will do. Only if you want to make use of all the bells and whistles, such as duplex or several paper trays, you need the correct PPD for your printer.

You could also try the net-print/hpijs driver. This is a PCL5 driver for all machines which can do PCL5 and above. According to the sparse info on the Canon-HP the GP405 should be PCL-enabled too. You'll need to get cups working with ghostscript in this case, something I haven't yet done myself. Ghostscript is needed to translate the postscript, which Linux apps send cups, to PCL-data, which in turn can be sent to the printer.

Interestingly the Linuxprinting page for the GP405 only mentions postscript, but since that apparently fails the hpijs-driver is worth a try.

lawa42 · Posted: Fri Oct 29, 2004 4:11 pm Post subject:

I tried the pxlmono but I will give the hpijs driver a chance. Lets see what our netadmin has to say to the turned off postscript topic

Gregor

btw: do you know how i can find out what printqueues a server supplies in general not only for the canon

bavstan · n00b Joined: 20 Apr 2004 Posts: 21 Location: Switzerland