How to install software for a Canon CLC3200 network printer

[bigal]

Hi all

I have just installed Gloria on a old eSys machine and need to add our office Canon CLC 3200 network printer. Canon list three packages at http://software.canon-europe.com/products/0010073.asp but as far as I can see none of them are DEB packages. This is my first step into Linux but obviously need access to our office printer so any advice will be appreciated.

Most of the other things that we use are available, and I think I can work out how to get them but am lost with this first step. I have read that I could use something called alien to install via the RPM package but have no idea how good it is, how reliable it is or even where in the repositories I can find it.

I realise that ours is not a 'run of the mill' printer, but could someone write a DEB package for it. Who would I ask please?

Cheers

bigal

[David Hunter]

Hi bigal.

Welcome to Linux Mint!
Actually I had this issue the other day when I installed LM7 on a computer at uni; I needed to print to a network printer.
It's actually quite easy to install - it's done in much the same way as an Apple computer does (if you've seen that being done before..).

Click on the menu. In the filter area, type "Printing" and click on Printing (which has the description "Configure printers" - there are three different items that will appear, just make sure you click on the configure one). You'll be shown a list of currently installed printers. If you have none installed, it should just be a white box.

In the top left corner of the screen, press the "New" button. This will search for any connected printers that aren't currently installed. On the next screen, there'll be a list on the left with "Network Printer" at the bottom of the list. Click on the arrow next to "Network Printer" and then .... (from here on it's all from memory, as I'm not at uni at the moment and not connected to a network!) at this point I was given a list of all available network printers, and then I just clicked on the right one, and LM7 automatically downloaded drivers for it and made it all work. Sorry I can't say exactly how I did that....

Hope that helps.

Otherwise, I don't think RPM packages are compatible with LM7.

Failing the above, I did look at the link you provided. The first item in the search results, a .tar.gz file, is the source code for the drivers. What you can do is download the source code (a .tar.gz file is an archive file, like .zip) and then create the package from that.

To do this:

(Download the .tar.gz file)
Open the archive and extract the files (lets say for example's sake into a folder on the desktop. Let's call the folder "drivers").
Then go to the menu and open Terminal.

You'll see the following:

david@HunterHeritage ~ $

Where "david" is your username and "HunterHeritage" is your computer name.

At this point, type

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cd Desktop

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cd drivers

(or whatever the name of the folder is instead of "drivers").

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./configure

(this will do some checks and give back any errors. If it says certain things weren't found - especially X development files - then please post here what they are).
If there are missing "development files", stop for now and post here what is missing. You need them to continue with the next step. Alternatively, you can find them all in the package manager.
Once you have anything that's missing...

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make depend

(This will take a while). Then

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make

(again, will take a while). Finally, type

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sudo make install

you will be asked for your password. Enter it.
This will install the driver itself.

If you have further issues, feel free to post here.

Best of luck!

[ibm450]

thanks for the guide, nice and simple. this is what we (newbies) need more patient people like you to post step by step instructions like this to ease the frustration of trolling the net to work out how to install things via terminal.

once again thanks.

bookmarked topic for future guidance

[David Hunter]

yeah I'm still a newbie myself lol.
Know how that feels...

Glad to see another Aussie around here!

[David Hunter]

oh yeah... I forgot to detail how to uninstall the driver.
Open up the terminal in the "driver" folder.

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sudo make uninstall

[David Hunter]

oh yeah... I forgot to detail how to uninstall the driver.
Open up the terminal in the "driver" folder.

Therefore, you MUST KEEP the "driver" folder, somewhere, after you have installed it so that you can uninstall it if necessary (i.e. due to software update incompatibility)... although I've never had to do that, so I don't know if that's completely true or not...

[ibm450]

oh yeah... I forgot to detail how to uninstall the driver.
Open up the terminal in the "driver" folder.

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sudo make uninstall

good stuff, never knew that...cheers for the heads up...

[bigal]

Hi David

Thank you for you very explicit and helpful reply. I tried the first method you suggested and although I managed to get the printer to print a page or two of Ooo writer text, none of the facilities available on the printer were accessible as I had to make do with a 'near enough' driver.

I then tried your second suggestion. Unzipping created a folder called cque-en-1.0-5. CD to there and tried ./configure but was told no such file or directory.

The folder contains three other folders, doc, images and ppd. It also contains the following files (the capitalisation is 'as is'). Cque.exe – has a windows graphic, CQUEINST.CONF, MAKXPP, setup and finally sicgsfilter. Additionally there is also a png graphic.

As ./configure did not work would you suggest I tried to run setup?.

In the doc folder there is a readme which I am copying below. It is suggesting a slightly different rout using the third file in then Canon list. Can I have your opinion please?


CQue 1.0-5 for Linux for Canon devices
====================================

For a tgz distribution please run:

./setup

from the directory into which you extracted this distribution.
For an RPM distribution, after installing the CQue RPM package, please run:

/opt/cel/bin/setup

This will correctly install the PPD files on your system.
The documentation will be found in:

/usr/share/doc/CQue1.0

Cheers

bigal

[David Hunter]

yeah give

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./setup

a go and see what happens. Can't hurt (I hope).

I've only had to compile a program once, and I thought the instructions were suitable for all apps... obviously not! Oh well, I guess we'll learn as we go!

[dawgdoc]

CQue 1.0-5 for Linux for Canon devices
====================================

For a tgz distribution please run:
./setup

from the directory into which you extracted this distribution.
For an RPM distribution, after installing the CQue RPM package, please run:
/opt/cel/bin/setup

It looks like the driver has been built for specific distro bases:
tgz distros are Slackware and those based on it. (Slackware has changed its package format to .txz as of ver. 13.0)

RPM distros are those such as Redhat/Fedora/OpenSuse etc. Alien is used for RPM packages, I haven't tried it, and may not apply in this case.

[David Hunter]

It looks like the driver has been built for specific distro bases:
tgz distros are Slackware and those based on it.

Ah, crap.
Oh well I guess give it a go and hope to god it works...

[David Hunter]

Any success?