Solved: Newbie with Canon MF4890dw printer fail

[Chriscom]

[ see last post please, it's a short thread ]

Greetings all, newbie on Mint 21.3 though I played with Red Hat many years ago.

I installed Mint on a clean-sheet desktop two weeks ago, got the basics up and running and I'm writing this on it. I cannot get my network-available Canon MF4890dw to print, though it chirps once when I try a test page. Mint recognizes it as Canon MF4800 Series, under Printers / Local Host. My Windows 11 (was W10) laptop prints on it over the same home network.

Mint finds the printer easily--I've removed and added it several times. When I have the failed-print-job option selected to "retry," it'll chirp again, and pop up the printing message, periodically. Mint also recognizes it for scanning, identified as Canon I-SENSYS MF8400 Series, but scan attempts return a "Failed to scan / error communicating with scanner" message. During my troubleshooting, I also enabled "Publish shared printers connected to this system" under Basic Server Settings.

The Mint Printer and Scanner User Guide says "no drivers are needed / installed drivers are not used," and I think that's what I've been trying to do. My main question right now is, should I be able to print driverless over IPP, given this is an old printer. The user guide of course says, try drivers if IPP/driverless doesn't work. And I've been going 'round in circles trying to figure out if I should worry about where CUPS fits in. Asking for some direction on which rabbit hole to pursue.

Closest forum thread I could find on this class is from 2014.

The desktop is brand new, built by a family member who built his own powerful Windows machine and spec'd this one for me (I've been planning video, audio and photo editing before deciding to try Linux again). Every other modest device I've tried so far works, though these are all hardware-connected--a (stunningly great) monitor, a keyboard/mouse, audio output, WiFi antenna etc. I've tried various (probably stab-in-the-dark) steps including the "Help" options in the desktop printer environment. Haven't tried any command-line adventures yet.

System details:
Asus ProArt B760-Creator motherboard
Intel i9-13900K CPU
Corsair Vengeance 64GB DDR5 memory
Two Samsung 980 Pro 2TB M.2 drives
Gigabyte GeForce RTX 4070 video card

Printer settings:
Description: Canon MF4800 Series
Location: blank
Device URI: dnssd://CanonMF4800._pdl-datastream._tcp.local/
Make and Model: Canon MP990 series - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.3.3
Printer State: Idle - Rendering completed

Thanks for any tips!

[BillyLinux]

In my experience there are times when CUPS does not fully work all of the time.

I have seen posts on this forum where users have resorted to using manufacturers drivers for both printer and scanner in the case of all-in-one.

In my own personal case, my Canon TS8000 series suddenly stopped printing duplex. I can't say exactly why or when, but I have my suspicions. So, I went to the Canon website and downloaded the package with the drivers for both the printer and scanner part. The package came with Canons own install script and I used it successfully on 4 devices. One tip I will give you; Always start from an empty canvas, keep your printer off. When you delete printers your printer should be off. If not CUPS autodetect will quickly jump in and add it again.
With the printer off, use the Canon install script to add your printer and make it the default printer. You can do no harm by updating your system. Reboot, Switch printer on - it will probably autdetect again and add it- but just ignore. Hopefully, you will be able to print to your manually added printer. Do the same for the scanner.
You should find your driver here
https://www.canon.co.uk/support/consume ... 20(64-bit)
It's a tar.gz package which once downloaded will need to be extracted.

In all cases if you need fuller instructions and help just say so.

[Chriscom]

Billy, that is very helpful and I greatly appreciate it. I'll purse that path and report back either way.

[Chriscom]

Just a head's up, I'm moving ahead a bit more slowly than planned, after a visit to the dentist led to a tooth-pulling that has distracted me a bit. I've managed to download the driver Billy found for me and extracted the files. At this point it's just a matter of learning elementary things like running an install script, navigating around directories and all that. Good night for now!

[Chriscom]

Okay, I finally took another whack at this and now I'm at least getting a longer beep from the printer than before, but no actual text. I ran the Help feature in Mint for the printer, and I get "data sent successfully" and "printing completed" messages but no actual text. I'm ready to try the process Billy outlined again but before I do so, thought I'd share this diagnostic the Help system generated. Should be available as attachment. Much thanks for any additional feedback. Could easily be a process error on my part.

[Chriscom]

I blundered around and after deleting and re-registering the printer again, I chose a "socket" option -- that is now listed with my printer's IP address in Properties--and now I can print quickly and well. Thanks to Billy for key help. I did install the Canon printer driver he pointed me to.

Next fix is getting the scanner to work, I am not sure if that's a separate driver, but I'll work through that separately and send up a flair if I stumble again.

Cheers all!

Chris