Convert Microsoft to LINUX: Print Scan Fax


Shopping for Linux Printers

My favorites if you can get your hands on them are the classic HP Laser Jets 4,5,6. There are other Laser Jets but they can be very difficult to install. I tried over 4 days with Fedora which has the best built in drivers with an HP Laserjet P1006 and had no success. I was almost there, but it failed using the hplip program because a checksum file was not updated. I have had great success with one of the newer Laserjet Printers from Brother with Fedora in particular the HL-L2380DW  . You can just use the basic printer configurer which brings up CUPS. You then add a printer and it will find all the right drivers. Be sure when printing documents to use Evince for your Document Viewer. Adobe will truncate the documents on the side. Note, it will even do double sided printing!!! Yay!

Note this also works with Debian by going to the Brothers Printers Web Site and downloading the latest Print Drivers for Linux. To save you the trouble I have done it here . You can save this file and then go to a terminal prompt and as root type:
gunzip linux-brprinter-installer-*.*.*-*.gz
bash linux-brprinter-installer-2.0.0-1
Type in the proper number for your printer, i.e. hl-l2360dw
When you see the message "Will you specify the DeviceURI ?",
For USB Users: Choose N(No)
For Network Users: Choose Y(Yes) and DeviceURI.
Good Luck!!

Deskjet HP Printer keeps Blinking and won't Print

You may occasionally find that a job gets stuck in your printer and can not be released through the usual way of:
lprm
done at the terminal prompt. Even uplugging the power supply and rebooting does not clear the blinking printer. In this case you need to install the latest hplip driver . You will find it here  . It will take half an hour to install everything in the cups book you never heard of, but it will work. OPENSUSE installs this latest driver automatically for you. This happened to me on the new 11.10 Ubuntu Kernel. The new driver with the HP icon on my top toolbar told me it was time to refill the catridges. I did that and everything worked. Before I did that, I was getting the error message printer on usb port is busy  .

Printing and Scanning Support: Epson V30 Scanner

There is good support in the Linux world for printing and scanning. In particular Epson has always supported Linux. You may have to download some drivers but it works beautifully. As an example on my latest ASUS 900HA Netbook, I bought a bottom line Epson Perfection V30 scanner. I went on the Epson Site following the instructions. You may have to type in V30 again to find the driver. You will then choose to download the Ubuntu/Debian or the RPM (Fedora/Red Hat/Suse) drivers.In each case click on the latest file for me it was dated November 2015. You untar the file using the standard command and then change to the new directory and run bash install.sh
i.e.:
tar -xvf *.rpm.gz
or
tar -xvf *.deb.gz
cd iscan-gt-f720-bundle-1.0.0.x86.rpm
or
cd iscan-gt-f720-bundle-1.0.0.x86.deb
bash install.sh
You are now done, relax and enjoy! Sweet!

As a final check everything is working use the lsusb command as in:
lsusb
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 05e3:0701 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB 2.0 IDE Adapter
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 059f:1018 LaCie, Ltd
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 093a:2700 Pixart Imaging, Inc.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 004: ID 04b8:0131 Seiko Epson Corp. GT-F720 [GT-S620/Perfection V30/V300 Photo]

Note, the Epson scanner on the bottom of the list there.



Printing and Scanning Support: AllinOne HP Printer/Scanner

I have not encountered support for Faxing from your computer. So you will have to do this by hand, that is feeding in the document to be faxed and dialing the telephone number yourself. As an example, I will discuss how to install the HP Office Jet Allinone printer/scanner/fax device. My customers particular one was the Office Jet HP k80xi . It does faxing, scanning, copying and printing. Here are the steps to configure it:

  1. Plug in the printer power supply, the USB port, the phone line and turn on the printer.
  2. In Mandrake go to Configure your Computer. There should already be an icon for it on your toolbar next to the picture of the terminal. In Suse you will go to YAST. In either case you will be prompted for your root password which is linux01 . Now click on the printer icon. It will ask you to install some programs after detecting the printer. In Mandrake 10.1 this will be CD 1 an CD 4 to install the CUPS UNIX/LINUX printing program and the sane program for talking to the scanner. The program called xscanimage will also be installed for giving you a nice graphical front end to do the scanning. xscanimage is part of quite a few programs installed with the sane package. Sorry, I did not come up with the names for these programs if they sound a little cryptic to you!
  3. Just as a doublcheck, you can click on the scanner icon and it should show the device of the HP Office Jet k80xi.
  4. One more further check in Mandrake go to the Star | System | Configuration | Printing | CUPS WWW admin tool. Here you can check that the printer is configured and there. It should all be done automatically. A word of caution, I was a little tired when I did this and got the same printer installed 3 times so nothing worked. The solution is simple, just delete the other 2 printers. There is a menu item there to do it. You can also see the print queue here and what jobs have been printed. In Suse you can just go to the Printer Icon on the Desktop and open it. It will show the Queues, print jobs and printers. You can similary edit and delete printers and print jobs in the queue.
  5. Now, the last step. I know you are itching to scan from the computer! Open a Terminal Konsole Session in Mandrake or Suse. That is go to Star or Start | System | Terminal . Type xscanimage and have your document ready to feed in. Set the slidebar icon to something like 150 dpi (dots per inch). You can go as high as 600, but that is overkill unless you are taking some really nice photographs! 75 dpi is sufficient for putting something up on the web. When you save it, it defaults to out.pnm as the name. Change it to something like taxes_04.pnm , that is something meaningful. You can now print this file or drag it into an Open Office Wordprocessor Document. As a last step create a menu item for this as described in the FAQ for Linux beginners.

How do I install a printer that is not in the Mandrake or Suse Printer Database?



This is easy to do:
  1. Click on Mandrake Control Center, Icon with Red Circle and Blue Terminal Window, type root password linux01. In Suse you would go to Yast and type your root password.
  2. Go ahead and add a printer by clicking on Hartware | Printer Icon. Then click on Add Printer | Next . Then click on "manual configuration" then next. It will start to "Autodetect" but there should then be a choice to "Install Manufacture-supplied PPD file". This is the file which you saved on your Desktop. You browse to it and say ok. Then Install PPD File from "other place". You have to click on the drop down box to change the choice from CD to "other place". Browse to your Dekstop /home/user1/Desktop where you have saved this .PPD file. It will be called something like HPOfficeJet6200.PPD Say OK and let it install.
  3. Lastly you go back into the Printer Admin Program and select Manage Printers and pick the 6200/6210 Printer as your default and try it.


I have only seen one printer problem in the Suse Linux World

If you change printers or configure a new printer, sometimes the configuration file for CUPS (Common UNIX Printing Services) gets corrupted. You will get the error: CUPS Daemon died during initialization . Well do not panic. Here is the solution, I discovered:

  1. Please download the following file cupsd_conf_fix.txt and use it to replace the current cupsd.conf one in the directory /etc/cups . Note, if you use the Konqueror when you are reading this webpage , simply click on Save as and it will default to the above name on your /home/user1/Desktop directory. Make sure you save it in the Desktop directory. If the file instead comes up inside a web page just click on File | save as and it should again default to the proper name.
  2. In order to do this you will need to go into the shell as instructed in the LINUX FAQ. You would then type su followed by a carriage return. Then enter the password for the root, which is linux01  
  3. Now type cd /etc/cups followed by a carriage return. Then type pwd . It should say you are in directory /etc/cups . If not , then retype the cd .. command.
  4. Now, assuming you saved the file on your LINUX Desktop , type
    cp /home/user1/Desktop/cupsd_conf_fix.txt   cupsd.conf .
  5. Lastly then reboot your machine, i.e. Logout and click on restart . Then go do your normal install printer thing and you should be fine. This worked great for me. I came up with this solution, because I got it after my customer got it. I had to reinstall the operating system for my customer, but I was determined to find an easier way for all future customers. Thankfully, the LINUX Gotterin smiled upon me.

Further Troubleshooting

Here are some further troubleshooting tips for all Linux operating systems:

  1. At the Terminal Konsole Session login as root by typing su and then your password linux01. You should now have a # prompt.
  2. Type:
    cat > testme
    hello printer
    hold down the control key and the letter d
    now type:
    cat > testme
    You should see: hello printer
    If you get the message no default destination available , then you need to go to System | Configuration | Printing | CUPS WWW Admin Tool . Click on Manage Printers . It will prompt you for the account and password to manage the printers which is root and linux01 . You then choose the appropiate printer.
  3. Now retype the lpr testme and you should see a page printed with one line on it. You can click on the Jobs in Printer Admin tool to see the status of your print job. You can also delete it here.
  4. One final caution which I have been burnt on a few times. If you are using DHCP at home the address of your printer is constantly changing. So go to the machine that has the printer on it and make sure you know its proper IP address. That is at a Terminal Session type ifconfig . Now you can go over to your MAC, other Linux or Microsoft Windows machine and set up IPP (Internet Protocol Printing). Make sure you use the IP address you have for the printer. Note, I assume the printer is hanging via USB connection off of your Linux Desktop. If you use the wrong address, nothing will print and you will get a message printer queue has been stopped, do you wish to continue or quit? When you finally put in the right address then you may find several duplicate jobs going to the printer. At this point go into the Printer Admin and delete those jobs before they print. Or as an alternative set the printer machine up with a fixed IP address . Good Luck !!!