I have downloaded, unpacked and kind of messed around with the CUPS driver for my Lexmark Z55 InkJet, from the Lexmark web site. Being totally new to Linux in general and having installed openSuSE just today, I don’t really know what I’m doing.
The instructions contained in the driver package are very sparse. I have run an sh comment aginst the driver and then used YaST to examine the printer. I was told that it needed configuring. As soon as I try to configure it YaST closes.
I’ve obviously done something wrong. Can somebody give me some guidance on how to install a CUPS printer driver?
I just took a look at that lexmark driver package and yea… it’s quite a bit of a mess. I don’t own the printer, so can’t tell you exactly how to get it running. However, you should make sure cups related packages such as cups-drivers, cups-client, cups-backend, cups-libs and probably cups-autoconfig are installed.
After installing them, go to the directory you extracted the driver archive into. Run ./lexmarkz55-CUPS-1.0-1.gz.sh -target install and it will create a new folder called install. Go into the new folder and run *rpm -Uvh .rpm to install the two rpm files in there.
You may need to reconnect the printer here for re-detection, but after the drivers are installed, go to yast printer setup and you should hopefully be able to configure the printer.
I have to warn you that I’m going to be demonstrating incompetence in depth here, so please be patient:
I have now discovered how to get details of what is installed. All the CUPS related packages you specified are installed. After about 20 attempsst to follow the remaining instructions I finally saw the ‘.’ preceding the ‘/’ in the command string you directed me to use. It mostly worked , telling me “Uncompressing Lexmark Printer Driver”, but then informing me of this problem:
./install: line 15: ./xlexinstall: No such file or directory
The program returned an error code (127)
Is this something that I can work around by creating this directory first? If so, where should it be?
Apologies, I should have been a bit more specific with the details. As far as I can tell, the error code 127 is unimportant. It seems the lexmarkz55-CUPS-1.0-1.gz.sh package is trying to perform an automagic installation, but the xlexinstall file doesn’t exist anywhere, so it bombs. Hopefully, the rpm files are all you really need to install.
The transaction lock error you got was because some other package manager was running. You have to close yast software manager if it’s open. Also make sure the zypper software updater is not checking for updates. You can also click on the rpm files to install them with zypper (z55llpddk-2.0-2.i386.rpm needs to be installed first).
Once they’re installed, you can open up yast printer manager by going into yast > hardware > printer.
I managed to follow your instructions down to the point of starting YaST again (the db lock is still on even though YaST was not running).
The printer is correctly detected and identified in the first part of printer configuration. I can browse the printer options tab in the configuration process, but as soon as I click on ‘next’, or any of the other tabs, configuration terminates immediately with an error message:
“terminate called after throwing an instance of ‘std:logic_error’
what (): basic_string::_S_construct NULL not valid
YaST got signal 6 at XCP file printer/dialogs.ycp:2569
/sbin/yast2: line 421: 6497 aborted $ybindr/y2base $module “$@” “$SELECTED_GUI” $Y2_GEOMETRY $Y2UI_ARGS”
Which is all in the best traditions of programmers not giving a d a m n about end-users! (btw I have put spaces in this word because some body some where decided to censor my words without any discussion with me. This is in the very worst traditions of McCarthyism - I’ve had to live through that once and had hoped people had grown up enough not to want to repeat that political madness. It seems not)
What in heaven’s name am I supposed to do with that lot?
Hmmm… McCarthyism may be too strong a word. The censorship probably has to do with the semblance of PG-13 atmosphere the forum is trying to maintain. Think of the children! Ehh don’t get me started on how 9 year olds can swear better than I do. :rolleyes:
The yast error messages are all greek to me, but it’s strange that it’s crashing at that particular point. The other tabs in the printer config window contain stuff like driver information, printer location and to share or not to share. This is mostly info that xlexinstall would have set had it been run, but yast should be able to identify that info as well. Out of curiosity, what is displayed in the Location area under Printer Options?
Try deleting the printer that is detected in yast printer manager. Unplug the printer, restart the comp and printer (just to be 100% on the safe side). Plug the printer back in and fire up yast printer manager again. The printer will be re-added to the list. See if the configuration goes through this time.
Magic!
The process of deleting the printer in Yast did not appear to be successful (there was no change to the information on the Configuration screen - the queue name remained ‘not configured’). However, powering off both printer and computer then powering up the computer, followed by the printer and then connecting via USB presented me with a printer setup window that I have never seen before. It allowed me to select a driver and print a very colourful test page.
I think I now have printer support. Thanks for your help. We can close this thread now.
