# A n00b's guide to set up printing with CUPS

## sessionID

Before I start, let me say that Gentoo has excellent documentation, great support forum - from the start of the installation everything worked as it should ... 

... The only thing that gave me a 9 hour work (and sometimes I've felt quite disapointed and hopeless) was the cups setup. 

So let me outline how I could get my HP Laser Jet 4 to work, maybe this will help some not-so-linux-talented ppl like me to make it as fast and painless as possible.

At first: read the Gentoo Printing Guide first. Do exactly as it tells You. Study the parts about kernel settings (paralell port /or usb/ compatibility have to be compiled in, at least as a module).

If the "official" steps don't work... try it my way  :Wink: 

1. unmerge cups, gimp-print-cups and ghostscript. 

```

# emerge unmerge gimp-print-cups

# emerge unmerge cups

# emerge unmerge ghostscript

```

2. merge cups 1.1.14-r4 (oldest version in portage right now), than merge gimp-print-cups 4.2.0-r1 (also the oldest version), finally merge ghostscript. 

[A lot of posts suggested this in the forums.]

```

# emerge /usr/portage/net-print/cups/cups-1.1.14-r4.ebuild

# emerge /usr/portage/net-print/gimp-print-cups/gimp-print-cups-4.2.0-r1.ebuild

# emerge ghostscript

```

3. As root, start the cups server: 

```
# /etc/init.d/cupsd start
```

4. Open up a browser, and go to http://localhost:631

You should see a web-based cups administration interface.

[If prompted for name&password, enter root/root-password]

5. Click on "printers", than on "Add printer". 

6. Enter anything for name, location and description (like "My Printer", "local", "HP Laser Jet", but it does not matter).

7. You will be promted for the "device": select parallel port [or if You have an USB printer, select USB - see the Gentoo Printing Guide about this].

8. Select the maker of your printer.

9. On the next page, select the model.

10. Click OK, and You have a new printer, that can (and maybe should) be customized in the Printers >> Configure printer menu.

11. Print a test page. If it works, You're ok, enjoy printing   :Smile: 

12. If You could not find the driver for Your printer in step 8/9, than visit the LinuxPrinting.org's printer database, and try to find your printer by selecting the manufacturer and model name.

13. Click on "Show". This will give You details about the printer's driver.

14. Click on a driver (for HP LJ 4 You'll have several, just click on the recommended). This will take You to the PPD-O-MATIC page.

15. Select Your printer from ppd-o-matic's list, and click on "Generate PPD file". 

16. You'll get a nice driver file right in your browser. Near the top of this file, You'll see a line like this: 

*% You may save this file as 'Brother-HL-10h-ljet4.ppd'

17. Save it with the suggested name. 

18. Su to root, and copy this file to /usr/share/cups/model.

19. Restart the cups server with the command

```
# /etc/init.d/cupsd restart
```

20. Now repeat steps 8/9, and You should see the downloaded driver in the "Model" list. 

That's it, You customize the printer, and it's ready to go.

I hope.......  :Wink: 

----------

## karl11

I agree wholeheatedly about cups 1.1.14, however, the new 1.1.17 works now and is the standard that portage is grabbing. It's a pre-release, but the first release since 1.1.14 that has worked for me  :Smile: 

----------

## Darthanubis

 :Very Happy:   :Very Happy:   :Very Happy: 

I LOVE YOU MAN!!!!

----------

## masseya

Moving from Hardware and Laptops as this is a very nice guide.   :Smile: 

----------

## perry

Worked for me   :Smile:    I was able to print a test page from the CUPS web interface and from OpenOffice (under KDE) without having gimp-print-cups installed.  As the name implies, I guess it's only needed if you want to print from Gimp?

----------

## Elm0

In an oh-so-intelligent move, HP decided to release some printers in 2000 that operated some what like that cheap and ugly devil-spawn piece of hardware, the WINMODEM. Instead of having all the processing parts inside the printer, the drivers offloaded all the calculations to the host system's CPU, meaning reduced costs overall, although somewhat tellingly, these savings weren't passed onto the consumer much.

Basically, this means that printers listed below do not work correctly with the standard HP driver included with CUPS. 

HP Deskjet 710

HP Deskjet 712 

HP Deskjet 720

HP Deskjet 722

HP Deskjet 820

HP Deskjet 1000 series

A sympton to look out for is that when you print the test page using CUPS it seems to say the page has been sent to the printer, but nothing comes out.

Therefore follow these easy steps after following the instructions at the top of this page by SessionID (as a side note, the latest versions of CUPS and ghostprint worked fine for me):

1. Install the special HP Deskjet drivers

```

# emerge pnm2ppa

```

2. Edit /etc/pnm2ppa.conf file. Here I have selected the model of my printer, the 720C.

```

#-----------set the printer model---------------------------

# YOU MUST CHOOSE ONE OF THE FOLLOWING, EVEN IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE!

#

# If there is more than one "version" entry activated, the last one

# will be used.   The printer version can also be set with the command line

# option e.g., "-v 720".

version  720    # 710, 712, 722 also acceptable

#version  820

#version 1000

```

3. Visit http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_driver.cgi?driver=pnm2ppa then in the drop-down menu for PPD-O-Matic (NOT the old PPD-O-Matic menu) select your model of printer. Save this output as a text file under /usr/share/cups/model/. You can choose any filename you wish as long as it has the extension .ppd

You should now have a driver available when you select Add Printer on the CUPS configuration web server, underneath the HEWLETT-PACKARD manafacturer section (not HP). Select this, then your printer (there will only be one) and you should be able to print a test page no problems.

Elmo

----------

## S_aIN_t

thanks for this.. although i ended up with the new version of CUPS anyway.. it seems to work.. i guess unmegring and merging again did something.. 

thanks again..

----------

## Tuxuser

The web interface requires from me a devive url right after selecting LPD/LPR as port. I'm afraid this is the point where I'm failing to install my parallel printer.

What did you set at this point, or do I make something wrong at some other stage that this input is required?

----------

## sessionID

 *Tuxuser wrote:*   

> The web interface requires from me a devive url right after selecting LPD/LPR as port. I'm afraid this is the point where I'm failing to install my parallel printer.
> 
> What did you set at this point, or do I make something wrong at some other stage that this input is required?

 

If You have a paralell printer, why not select paralell port in the setup?

You can select it afther giving the new printer a name.

----------

## Tuxuser

Your question sounds reasonable but in the seletion menu I can coose only from this list:

AppSocket/HP JetDirect

Internet Printing Protocol (http)

Internet Printing Protocol (ipp)

LPD/LPR Host or Printer

SCSI Printer

Serial Port #1

Serial Port #2

USB Printer #1

USB Printer #2

...

USB Printer #16

 :Question: 

----------

## Tuxuser

 :Smile: 

I made it. Trick was that the parallel port is mentioned twice in the kernel configuration.

First: "Parallel port support" (obvious)

Second: "Character devices" (less obivous)  :Exclamation: 

----------

## pablo_pita

 *Elm0 wrote:*   

> 
> 
> You should now have a driver available when you select Add Printer on the CUPS configuration web server, underneath the HEWLETT-PACKARD manafacturer section (not HP). Select this, then your printer (there will only be one) and you should be able to print a test page no problems.
> 
> Elmo

 

Only add that you need to re-start CUPS to see the HEWLETT-PACKARD manafacturer section. 

This setup description has been quite useful for me as I was wandering in the net to find all the elements to setup my HP 720C.  Thanks !

----------

## whit

I was getting a permission denied message in my browser when trying to print the test page. There's a section in /etc/cups/cupsd.conf that needs to be edited to allow permission. Go to <Location /printers/name>, change "name" to the name you used for your printer (which you may have discovered cannot have spaces in it - although the error message from cups at that earlier stage complains about the number of characters rather than being to the point). Uncomment this Location line, as well as the </Location> line below it, and add something like "Allow From All" in between (and perhaps uncomment the Order line - I did, not sure if it's required). 

By doing this I am able to print a test page. (It's not a good test page, but that's a different problem - the driver for my printer must be wrong - got to find the stair stepping fix and apply it, if the result of a simple cat is diagnostic.) 

You'd probably want more restrictive permissions in a shared network than "All".

Oh, and now I discover that /admin similarly installs with permissions allowing no access. Guess it's time for bugzilla  :Confused:  Further notes: not one of the 3 cups setups for a HPIIIp actually works. None of the graphics on the /admin cups cgi pages display. Guess I need to look elsewhere to generate a correct IIIp driver file, and then look for a further permissions problem on cups graphic icons.

Then I went to LinuxPrinting.org, as recommended here, and generated a printer control file that actually works for a IIIp. But once again I got permission denied when going to print a test page. This time I fixed it by uncommenting <Location /printers> and the </Location> tag after it, and putting between them "Allow From All". This also fixes the missing graphics in the /admin area.

So the short version of this: Go to LinuxPrinting.org for a current verion of your printer driver, don't trust the stuff already on your system is ideal, or even works. And edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf to allow access to <Location /printers>. Haven't tested if that's enough, or if <Location/printers/[your_printer> also has to be fixed as above.

Alternate fix on the permissions: looking at the cups logs, some of the connections were coming not from 127.0.0.1 but from the system's fully qualified domain (such as "box.domain.com"). Adding an "Allow From box.domain.com" to <Location /> in cupsd.conf appears to also fix the permissions problems, and is most likely the right way to do it. <Location /admin> also needs this entry for the fully qualified name.

----------

## rasto

i found out that stp is old device and that i should use ijs,

so i downloaded new ppd file for my printer and it gives me error that it cannot find ijsgimpprint

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] [Job 8] foomatic-gswrapper: gs '-dPARANOIDSAFER' 

'-dNOPAUSE' '-dBATCH' '-sDEVICE=ijs' '-sIjsServer=ijsgimpprint' '-dIjsUseOutputFD'

 '-sDeviceManufacturer=CANON'

'-sDeviceModel=bjc-2000' '-dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=612' '-dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=792' 

'-r360x360' '-sProcessColorModel=DeviceRGB'

'-sIjsParams=Quality=360x360dpi,InkType=CMYK,MediaType=Plain,

MediaSource=Auto,Dither=Adaptive,ImageType=0,

Density=1.000000,Brightness=1.000000,Gamma=1.000000,

Contrast=1.000000,Saturation=1.000000,Cyan=1.000000,

Magenta=1.000000,Yellow=1.000000' '-sOutputFile=/dev/fd/3' '/dev/fd/0' 3>&1 1>&2

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] [Job 8] ESP Ghostscript 7.05 (2002-09-02)

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] [Job 8] Copyright (C) 2002 artofcode LLC, Benicia, CA.  

All rights reserved.

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] [Job 8] This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the 

file PUBLIC for details.

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] [Job 8] sh: line 1: ijsgimpprint: command not found

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] [Job 8] ESP Ghostscript 7.05.5: Can't start ijs server 

"ijsgimpprint"

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] [Job 8] **** Unable to open the initial device, quitting.

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] [Job 8] Couldn't exec foomatic-gswrapper -q 

-dPARANOIDSAFER

-dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -sDEVICE=ijs -sIjsServer=ijsgimpprint

-dIjsUseOutputFD -sDeviceManufacturer=CANON -sDeviceModel=bjc-2000 

-dDEVICEWIDTHPOINTS=612

-dDEVICEHEIGHTPOINTS=792 -r360x360 -sProcessColorModel=DeviceRGB 

-sIjsParams="Quality=360x360dpi,

InkType=CMYK,MediaType=Plain,MediaSource=Auto,

Dither=Adaptive,ImageType=0,Density=1.000000,

Brightness=1.000000,Gamma=1.000000,Contrast=1.000000,

Saturation=1.000000,Cyan=1.000000,Magenta=1.000000,

Yellow=1.000000" -sOutputFile=- - at /usr/lib/cups/filter/cupsomatic line 1097.

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] [Job 8] tail process done writing data to *main::STDOUT

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] [Job 8] KID4 finished

E [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] PID 2096 stopped with status 32!

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] [Job 8] error closing *main::KID3 at 

/usr/lib/cups/filter/cupsomatic line 892, <STDIN> line 622.

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] UpdateJob: job 8, file 0 is complete.

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] CancelJob: id = 8

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] StopJob: id = 8, force = 0

D [18/Feb/2003:22:00:43 -0500] StopJob: printer state is 3

cannot find this file on my system /usr/bin/ijsgimpprint

what package do i need?

strangely gimp-print gives me 

/usr/share/man/man1/ijsgimpprint.1.gz but no /usr/bin/ijsgimpprint !!

OK i FIXED IT!! its not perfect solution but i did it. spend whole night on it.

ijsgimpprint in gimp-print gets build only if it find ijs-config, which in turn is build in ghostscript.

ghostscript has --with-ijs flag but didnt make it, dont ask me why ... i dont know.

so what i did is unpacked esps-... package then cd to ijs,

./configure make make install and after the run emerge gimp-print. test page is printing know ... 

it looks like i have another problem, colors are all messed up. 

anyway i have to get some sleep before i try to solve this oneLast edited by rasto on Mon Nov 24, 2003 1:01 am; edited 2 times in total

----------

## Ian Goldby

Regarding the Gentoo Printing Guide, it's worth pointing out that you don't need foomatic unless the printer that you want to use is not natively supported by CUPS or gimp-print-cups. Since the vast majority of printers that you are likely to use are supported, you probably don't need foomatic.

You may not even need gimp-print-cups. CUPS comes with built-in support for several common printers. I suggest you only install CUPS initially, and then go on to install gimp-print-cups if you need it (e.g. CUPS doesn't list a driver for your printer.)

Having said that, if you are going to be printing photographs, the gimp-print-cups drivers (for the Epson Stylus printers at least) provide very much better quality than the built-in CUPS driver for these printers.

----------

## rakis

Just a suggestion, but can somebody make this the de facto guide for setting up CUPS?  I thought this was much easier, and much quicker way of getting CUPS up and running.  Maybe at least include a link on the Printing Guide...?

Just a thought.   :Laughing: 

----------

## TGL

Something else that could be added to the cups guide is pdf generation with cups. I use cups-pdf thanks to the npalmer76's ebuild (not in portage yet). I've configured it throw the web admin page, and here is what it has produced:

```
root # cat /etc/cups/printers.conf

# Printer configuration file for CUPS v1.1.18

# Written by cupsd on Mon Apr 14 16:11:48 2003

<DefaultPrinter pdf>

DeviceURI cups-pdf:/

State Idle

Accepting Yes

JobSheets none none

QuotaPeriod 0

PageLimit 0

KLimit 0

</Printer>
```

Now, when a user prints a given file, it produces a pdf: /var/tmp/cups-pdf/<user>/<filename>.pdf

EDIT: I've updated the ebuild in the original bug report. /var/tmp/... is now /var/spool/... with this new version.Last edited by TGL on Mon Jun 02, 2003 10:16 pm; edited 1 time in total

----------

## smokeslikeapoet

Nice work. Finally got my printer up and running with little work. Just a couple of notes. I had no problems with the current stable versions of cups. If you're installing a printer for system without xwindows, you can use "lynx localhost:631" but not "links localhost:631" to configure your printer through cups' web interface (this is due to authentication support). Okidata laser printers use HP LaserJet II drivers. (That was my main problem). LinuxPrinting.org helped me out with that one. Good work!

----------

## snagar

about cups-pdf

TGL - I used the latest drive and it seems to work meaning creates the .pdf file but the file does not sent automatically to the printer.

What should I do ?

----------

## TGL

 *snagar wrote:*   

> I used the latest drive and it seems to work meaning creates the .pdf file but the file does not sent automatically to the printer.

 

This is the way it's meant to work. It's only a virtual printer driver, to create pdfs from applications which can't export to this format. I don't know how to send a job to two printers (the real one and the virtual one), but their are probably some tips to do that. Any cups expert around?

----------

## wHAcKer

OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG

I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  :Twisted Evil: 

I tried hours and hours to get my printer working and it never did, not with custom drivers, not with standard drivers NEVER...

I used your guide and it works like a charm first time trying!!!!!!!

i mean, before this i couldn't even cat anything to my printer

now it's the greatest  :Smile: 

THANKS MAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

seems like i needed other versions of cups/gimp-print-cups  :Smile: 

woooooooooohooooooooooooow

/me happy

these forums rock

----------

## sessionID

I should post a paypal button here   :Twisted Evil: 

----------

## nokiaxv2

but now i'm having an issue...I use the Lexmark Optra E laster printer. When i add a new printer, my printer name and model is listed in parenthesis next to the parallel port. The addition of the printer goes fine, I visit the linuxprinting.org site, get the appropriate printer driver for my specific printer, save it and copy it over to the appropriate folder...Everything sets up superbly...now, when i print a test page...nothing happens, no lights flicker or anything on my printer. On my administration page for cups, this is what is listed (yes, i did restart cupsd):

Lexmark Optra E, Foomatic + ljet4 (recommended) 

Description: Lexmark laser printer

Location: MyRoom

Printer State: processing, accepting jobs.

Device URI: parallel:/dev/unknown-parallel0     <---believe that this is my problem

Thats all it does is site there (after pressing test print) with the state saying "Processing" but nothing occurs. Now, was there something else I should have done with gentoo to have my printer/parallel port assigned to something in /dev/

I'm at a stand stick, any help is greatly appreciated...

ghostscript, cups, gimp-print-cups are installed. (gimp-print conflicts with gimp-print-cups)

TIA,

----------

## ghetto

I cant seem to get my printer working lately. Ive followed the instructions, and I have installed my printer just like I used to, then restarted cups but when i try to print something all i get is the printer spitting out blank sheets until i cycle cups to make it stop.

Can I get a few tips please on how to trouble shoot and diagnose printer problems?

Can I also get the exact versions of cups ghostscript and gimp-print-cups that people are using so that i know which combinations are known to work?

I am running ~x86 so I have newer versions of the packages mentioned so far and I think maybe its package incompatibility that is causing my problem.

I have a simple printer, and HP deskjet 612C Inkjet printer. It has worked fine with the standard HP Deskjet 600C driver.

----------

## MrCoffee

I foolishly spent as much time as you plowing through the same issues.  Since I'm also a USB n00b, I didn't know if I had gotten all the USB stuff set up either.  Thankfully, after emerging the earlier CUPS and going to the Admin > Add Printers a new device appeared with my printers name on a USB port!  The test print worked great.  Now sharing so my wife can print from XP!  Anyways, thanks again.    :Very Happy: 

----------

## mkershaw

just wanted to let you know......yet another happy customer!!

thnx much man...worked like a charm...

----------

## Mayhem

Hey,

Is it me or is gimp-print-cups not in portage atm?

----------

## Ian Goldby

 *Mayhem wrote:*   

> Is it me or is gimp-print-cups not in portage atm?

  If your USE variable has CUPS in it, then an emerge gimp-print will actually give you gimp-print-cups.

----------

## MasonMouse

I had trouble getting CUPS to work but eventually got it all ironed out thanks in part to the Gentoo Printing Guide and posts on the forum, but for the life of me I never could figure out how to print to a remote CUPS server. The docs say to use printername@servername but that never worked. I tried http://servername/printername, ipp://servername/printername, Samba, and just about every possible combination I could think of, but to no avail. Finally I figured out the part I was missing. If you need to print to a remote server, edit /etc/cups/client.conf on your client machine and where it says ServerName, enter, obviously, the name of the print server. Now just add the printer on your client using only the name of the printer and bingo! You're up and printing.

In my case, my server is named pony and my printer is an hp1120 so the line in /etc/cups/client.conf on both of my client machines reads:

ServerName pony

Then I just add hp1120 as my printer name and it's a go - I use XFCE so I add it to the Printer Management dialogue box. No need to tell the computer that it's a remote printer because client.conf handles that part.

----------

## echo6

I'm trying to configure CUPS with KDE and a shared Samba printer on my XP machine.

Whenever I try http://localhost:631 I get an error

 *Quote:*   

> An error occured while loading http://localhost:631:
> 
> Could not connect to host localhost (port 631)

 

----------

## echo6

Ignore the last,  something on my system was truly borked.

```
emerge -C cups

rm -rf /etc/cups

emerge cups

```

It's now working very sweetly the foomatic drivers  :Smile: 

----------

## !db!

Still in first week of fiddling with my Gentoo installation. Going over the Gentoo Printing Guide (as I've read in this previous set of posts, not the best Gentoo guide), I was struck by the following instructions:

[mine is parallel, local printer]

"Now that the necessary packages are installed, it is time to install the printer.

Depending on what type of printer connection you will be using, it will be necessary to enable either parallel port or USB port printer connections in the kernel. [...]

To enable Parallel port support, go to Parallel port support and enable Parallel port support and PC-style hardware. Depending on your printer you also have to activate Multi-IO cards (parallel and serial), Support for foreign hardware and IEEE 1284 transfer mode. Then go to Character devices and enable Parallel Printer Support.

After the kernel is built, make sure that the printer is plugged in and then restart your computer. Now it is time to load the necessary modules: [...]"

Wowwwwwwwwwww! (newbie reaction)

1. How does one check if Parallel port support is already in place or not;

2. If not, where is this 'Parallel port support' (file?)?

3. How does one add a kernel module(?) for this ?

 :Shocked: 

----------

## gpmartinson

Wow, this worked like a charm

it's as simple as:

1. unmerge all printing stuff

2. make sure that make.conf has cups samba ppds and foomaticdb

3. emerge cups foomatic gimp-print 

4. There is no step four.  

Thanks for the help!

----------

## MrGreen

Hi

 I have just used your guide and my HP 660C is working ....Thank you

 I have noticed the colours are out how do I fix this ?

 Mr G  :Mr. Green: 

----------

## lsiden

 *Tuxuser wrote:*   

> 
> 
> I made it. Trick was that the parallel port is mentioned twice in the kernel configuration.
> 
> First: "Parallel port support" (obvious)
> ...

 

I'm having this problem too!  But I've checked, and I already have both Parallel Printer Support and Character Devices/Parallel Printer support compiled into the kernel image.  So why doesn't "Parallel" appear in the dropdown of devices in the CUPS "add printer" admin page?

----------

## pjp

Don't take this the wrong way, but are there any options for LPT1 or 2?

----------

## lsiden

 *pjp wrote:*   

> Don't take this the wrong way, but are there any options for LPT1 or 2?

 

You're not gonna believe this, but when I looked again, I now have an option labelled "Parallel Port #1" in the dropdown that wasn't there before!  I'm not sure what I did besides reboot!  I'm going to bed!   :Smile: 

----------

## Redeeman

im surely gonna try this! it looks easy and nice

----------

## Gentree

Hi,

I see the last post here is at least year old so things have moved on.

gimp-print-cups is no longer in portage. May it is integrated into gimp-print or just not needed.

also latest cupsd seems to correctly report printers on USB so the un-mergre re-emerge step is not needed for cups

I dont know how relavant this thread is now.

----------

## Gentree

 *gpmartinson wrote:*   

> Wow, this worked like a charm
> 
> it's as simple as:
> 
> 1. unmerge all printing stuff
> ...

 

Yeah, WOW!   :Laughing: 

worked here too. 

Shame I had to waste a whole day screwing around before I found the thread.

Nice work anyway. Just what I needed.

Thanks.  :Cool: 

----------

## dkaplowitz

Thanks for posting this thread. I struggled with setting up my HP LaserJet 2100 (on a JetDirect card) on my LAN for several hours a few months ago and gave up in frustration. 

I came back to it today and dicked around with the http://localhost:631/ settings and somehow magically got it to work.

Here is how I configured it (which was mostly defaults by and large):

Location: LAN

Description: LaserJet

Device: AppSocket/HP JetDirect

Device URI: socket://192.168.0.15:9100/

Make: HP

Model HP LaserJet Series CUPS v1.1 (en)

So psyched to have it working now. It's one of the last few things I had to configure on the machine.

Thanks for your post. It definitely helped me at least get to a point where I could start figuring stuff out.

----------

## t_2199

Thanks this guide saved me alot of time !

My only problem was you need to install the driver for your printer before you can set it up with Cups..

----------

## erickfq

I have this problem on my cups configuration, i install tha parport and parport_pc modules, and the printer y on parport0 in /proc/...  i think that the problem is that i dont have a /dev/lp0  :Shocked: 

Device URI: parallel:/dev/unknown-parallel0 <---believe that this is my problem

 :Shocked: 

----------

## aloha99

Another satisfied customer!

I'm using an Epson Stylus C80, so I use the gimp-print driver, which kind of precludes the use of PPD-o-matic. Not sure why yet, but had to reboot before cups would see all the drivers for gimp-print. Once I did ... success!! Thanks!

----------

## G2k

you're the best...there's nothing else to it. ive been trying to set this HP DeskJet 820 Cse up for soooo long. it was a matter of doing

```

# /etc/init.d/cupsd stop

# emerge -C cups ghostscript && rm -rf /etc/cups && emerge cups ghostscript

# /etc/init.d/cupsd start

```

everything was smooth after that!

thnx

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## torchZ06

nice job, sessionID!  worked like a champ for me on a HP Color Laserjet 4550 at work (hooked to a jet direct card).  i used the ipp:ip-address and the PPD file downloaded from linuxprinting.org.  only thing was after copying it into /usr/share/cups/model i noticed a 'HEWLETT-PACKARD' choice in the CUPS dropdown menu (as well as the 'HP' choice that i noticed before i did your proceedure-- maybe it was there all along, but i can't say for certain)

anyway there were like 3 choices for HP Color Laserjet 4550/Postscript (recommended) in the HP section and like 2 more in the HEWLETT-PACKARD section.  it wasn't until like the 4th one that i managed to get it to print non-garbled output and produce the familiar CUPS test page.  i don't know where all those other ones came from as i didn't see them before i copied the .ppd file over.... maybe i'm imagining things.... all i know is it works now!  gracias!

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## mxc

I am having problems with printing to cups-pdf from client machines. If I print a test page from the web management console it works fine. As soon as I try and print from any client machine via the normal print dialog box the printer crashes. I get the following errors in my log file

 *Quote:*   

> I [06/Apr/2005:19:09:58 +0200] Job 301 queued on 'PDF' by 'abd'.
> 
> I [06/Apr/2005:19:09:58 +0200] Started filter /usr/lib/cups/filter/pstops (PID 17714) for job 301.
> 
> I [06/Apr/2005:19:09:58 +0200] Started backend /usr/lib/cups/backend/cups-pdf (PID 17715) for job 301.
> ...

 

I tried changing the log level to debug but the volume of info was so large I couldnt find anything new. I thought it might have something to do with setting the page size to A4 but leaving it as letter didnt work.

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## marelven

Thank you very much for your guide !   :Very Happy: 

It helped me to solve a weird problem I had with my HP Deskjet 950C. I could print but the colors were kind of "dotted".

After installing the right PPD file found on linuxprinting.org for my printer, I could print in plain colors again !   :Razz: 

I didn't even have to uninstall the current version of cups or gimp-print-cups. Nice.

Thanks again.

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## ShanaXXII

emerge can't seem to find gimp-print and ghostscript

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## John R. Graham

See app-text/ghostscript-gpl and net-print/gutenprint (new name for gimp-print). That said, that guide is over 10 years old and apparently unmaintained. You should expect some problems and be prepared to research solutions.  :Wink: 

- John

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## ShanaXXII

thanks  :Very Happy: 

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## ShanaXXII

I can't seem to find the driver for my printer.. 

I have a Brother MFC-J430w

 :Sad: 

The model isnt in the printer list either -> http://www.openprinting.org/printers

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