Messages

I suspect mfp just searches through the devices, open it for writing, and then writes.  The difference is that it knows what the timeouts should be, and if the printer prefers any additional information, etc.

I'd like to hear from Samsung about what ALL the driver pieces do, or just have them open up the source.

Thanks for sharing, I will include that as a possible solution that next time I update such information.

Local availability is pretty variable, but I have not had any issues with internet orders of any toner.  And I don't know that my use is typical, but my Samsung cartridges certainly last a long time and don't degrade noticeably even after 3-4 years of use.

I also have to comment that as annoying as my Samsung printer is at times, it really does significantly out-perform the "comparable" HP printers that I also regularly use, at least in terms of print quality (the HP printers are quieter and substantially faster).  So it is definitely worth looking carefully at specifications and reviews before making a final decision.  (My printer hasn't been sold for years, so that's not directly appicable for you.)

If it is an authorization problem, perhaps printing as root would work, or making sure your user is added to the appropriate group?

In my experience, HP printers are by far the best supported under Linux, and I have never encountered one (admittedly not a huge sample size) that did not install easily and with a full feature set (often more features than under Windows) using packages available with any current Linux distribution.

Most Samsung printers and setups also seem to work well, especially using this repository - something close to 10,000 people (from all over the world) seem to be using it now, and relatively few do anything other than install a basic of set of packages and go.  So while problems certainly exist, most people don't encounter anything other than the need to set up this repository to access the drivers.

Based on my research when I was recently in the market for a new printer, Brother, Oki, etc. are all comparable to Samsung in Linux support - usually it works, but not necessarily using standard drivers available in the distribution and there are some difficult cases.  However, I'm not aware of an equivalent support group/external repository to deal with any other manufacturer (which isn't to say they don't exist - I haven't looked very hard).  A few companies are still truly awful with Linux support, and it is much harder to determine in advance if a printer will work.

So all things being equal, I would probably recommend HP.  However, not all things are equal.  So if a Samsung printer that meets your requirements is cheaper, or higher quality at a particular price, or simply gets much better reviews than a comparable HP, I would certainly not discourage you from purchasing the Samsung.

None of the errors seem to be critical.  Have you tried to actually configure the printer with CUPS at this point?

This brings me to the next question: Is there a way to send a fax with the printer drivers? Because the Android app can send faxes, and I believe so can the Windows and Mac OS software...

Not that I am aware of.  But when I have a chance, I will see if I can learn anything useful by looking at the Andriod app.

I will package this up and add it to the repository, sometime in the near future.

For Ubuntu 8.04, you may need to use the samsungmfp-driver-legacy package; I don't know if the libc6 with that release is current enough to work with the later driver versions.  As long as you don't try to install the configurator packages, there should be no need for X or QT packages.

samsungmfp-sane-fix-multiarch is part of the main scanner package with 4.00.39, so no longer needs to be installed as a separate package (unless using the older driver files).

There is an unidentified problem with some recent qt4 library that conflicts with the qt4 configurator.  I haven't been able to pin it down, because it only seems to affect a few people and I can't reproduce it.  But many other qt4 programs have had similar issues with recent qt4 libraries, so I'm pretty sure it is a qt4 issue and not the configurator.  For now, just use the qt3 version and you can try the qt4 version later to see if it works.

I'm not sure about the file save location issue.  Maybe you should just use another scanner interface such as simplescan or xsane?

Obviously my "mixed feelings" were not with the hard work you've accomplished already but with the pain of getting this smoothly working for all users (let's be honest, the probability that a non-tech user would be able to get this up and running right after having his AIO printer plugged is infinitesimal).

Believe me, that I understand.  This whole thing started when I spent days trying to get my printer working several years ago, and decided to share the results of that, and then tried to simplify and accomodate requests over the years.  The fact that so many thousands of people are using this is so amazing to me partly because I still view it as having a substantial technical hurdle, and so I can only imagine how many might still be struggling.

The answer to your first question is given on this page:
http://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/repository.html

Ubuntu has a more developed structure than Debian for distributing closed-sourced materials, but because Samsung has refused to clarify the legal aspects of distribution, the distributions are correctly assuming that they do not have the right to distribute.  I would be happy to collaborate with anyone who wanted to set up distribution-specific packages and try to get them incorporated into an official repository, but that is beyond what I can commit to for the near future.

Your second question is also partially addressed there, mainly that I don't have time.  (This whole project has grown far beyond what I expected when I started it.)  However, I have no objection if someone else wanted to set up a Launchpad project and point to this website.  That is essentially what an Arch Linux user did when setting up the Arch package.

Double-check to make sure an appropriate ppd appears to be installed.  It may be necessary to delete the printer and re-install it.

It may also help to try a manual lp print, as in this post: http://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/forum/index.php?topic=59.0 .  For some reason, that seems to clear an initial block in some setups.

I believe you have two choices: update to a more current distribution, or build a custom version of (eg)libc6 at version 2.10 and have the netdiscovery tool use that.  That was a temporary fix I applied via packages in early 2011, but newer Samsung driver versions resolved the issue - except with the particular version of libc6 that you are running.  Given that 10.10 is well out of support anyway, I would suggest updating your whole system unless there is a compelling reason not to.  Grabbing an old copy of libc6 and compiling it is not terribly hard, then netdiscovery just needs to be loaded with a script that loads the old libc6 instead of the current one.

All the configuration is at the begining of the script so it would be easy to move it to an extra file under /etc. Any preferences?

No, anything uniquely identifying works for me.

The script would also need an upstart config file and, potentially, a logrotate one as well.

For compatibility, I use old-style init scripts for packages that need them; that way they can be used with any of the various startup routines, and upstart (or whatever) can deal with it on the fly.  This is simple for me to implement.  I haven't looked at your script closely enough to see if it is generating enough output to justify a logrotate, but feel free to include that if you think it might be necessary.

I am unlikely to do anything with packaging for at least the next two weeks, although I hope to spend some time on it at some point in January.  (I'm really hoping Samsung releases a new driver right before then, but they seem to have a habit of doing that right after I go through an update round.)  So from my point of view, there is no urgency on this.

At the moment what it is anoying me is that Sane is slow with the Samsung devices conpared to scanning from Windows: it takes 45 second to scan a page in "Grayscale - 256 Levels" and 300 dpis while Windows or scanning to a USB memory plugged into the scanner only takes 15. My theory based on the number and size of the packages in my network capture is that the Windows driver is able to tell the scanner to scan and transfer the image already compressed in JPEG format. In Sane I only found support for PNM and TIFF...

I suspect you are correct.  Personally I find that to be no loss, as I much prefer to take the time/storage penalty at the front end and decide later whether the compression is necessary/worthwhile.  I'm probably in a minority, though, and it also doesn't really matter since I personally have no use for this script (no scanner on my printer).  I doubt there is an easy solution to that, unless there is a physical printer configuration option to default to jpeg output.

Of course, it may also just be that the Windows driver is faster or more efficient in its transfer protocol.  That would hardly be surprising given the massive investment in Windows support Samsung has compared to Linux.

Great.  I'll make a note of this as a Configurator issue; it may be related to a couple of other apparently random problems I haven't yet found a proper solution for, and am hoping another update from Samsung will occur soon to help resolve.

I'm not sure why the GPG key was giving you trouble, but based on what you posted you should now be set to install.  The update list you posted is just the servers and package listing files, not the packages themselves.  If you try to install something like samsungmfp-driver at this point, it should work.

As far as installing vs connecting first, it doesn't really matter.  This doesn't involve any sort of auto-detection, so either way you'll need to manually set the driver after getting everything in place.

The sane-fix packages have been incorporated into the main packages, so aren't necessary unless you install an older driver version.  Have you tried something other than Configurator to run the scanner (e.g., xsane or simplescan)?

You might try installing the printer using the generic PCL5e driver.  There are a couple of reports that works on openprinting.org, and it may address your strange printing issues.  Otherwise I can only recommend my standard troubleshooting: trying different driver versions from the repository.

Thanks for sharing.  If this proves of interest to others, and any configuration is moved out of the script itself into a config file, I could probably package and distribute it.

I'm not sure if it will help, but you should be able to install the samsungmfp-scanner package (and its various dependencies) using apt-get in the terminal.

But I think probably the issue is usbfs or usblp.  You could try

Code Select Expand

modprobe -r usblp as a temporary way to see if the printer works without that module running, to at least try to narrow down the problem.  I suspect this is really a bug/issue that should be raised with the distribution, and forwarded to the appropriate upstream folks.

This is an old issue that relates to libc incompatibilities, but I thought it had been long dealt with.  What packages & versions do you have installed from my repository, and is this 32-bit (i386 or 686) or 64-bit (amd64)?

There is a remote chance that the only practical solution will be for you to update your system to a more recent distribution, because only part of this issue is due to Samsung's driver; the other part is actually in certain versions of the libc packages.  And with (X)Ubuntu, those can only easily be updated by upgrading the whole system.

I would guess it is a bug in the pdf renderer, but whether it is ghostscript, cups, or Samsung I couldn't say for certain.  Acrobat typically outputs as PS, which is probably why it worked fine.  There should be no particular problem printing everything as PS.  You could drive the pdf-driver-fix package to see if that impacts the pdf output.

I believe it is resolved, for now.  Please post back if issues return.

I'm glad it is working.  The network host issues appear to be resolved, at least for now.  But when my renewal is next up (in a few months), I may still move.  Please post back if issues return.

If it is working with foomatic, you should be able to install the Samsung driver in parallel, and then just use the Samsung part for scanning support (i.e., install the samsungmfp-scanner package, but don't change anything about the printer setup).

It appears my hosting company is having system-wide issues that are beyond their ability to handle.  This is not an issue I can address.  All I can suggest is to stop hitting the website for at least a few hours, maybe a day or so, and it should reset.  Apparently multiple failed attempts to access fails (due to a slow network, at the hosting end) is causing temporary blocking of IP addresses.  I suspect this is related to a solution they implemented in response to denial-of-service attacks a few weeks ago.  I did encounter the 302-related error briefly today, but it cleared out on its own after the third attempt I made to connect.

I don't have time to deal with this now, but if the issues continue over the next weeks I will see about switching hosts.

It appears my hosting company is having system-wide issues that are beyond their ability to handle.  This is not an issue I can address.  All I can suggest is to stop hitting the website for at least a few hours, maybe a day or so, and it should reset.  Apparently multiple failed attempts to access fails (due to a slow network, at the hosting end) is causing temporary blocking of IP addresses.  I suspect this is related to a solution they implemented in response to denial-of-service attacks a few weeks ago.

I don't have time to deal with this now, but if the issues continue over the next weeks I will see about switching hosts.

Several people have recently reported that trying to print using lp seems to release whatever the blockade is for some printers, such as the method described in this post: http://www.bchemnet.com/suldr/forum/index.php?topic=59.msg233#msg233

IPP errors are almost worthless, in that there is no good reference for what they mean, and the majority of them seem to have no impact anyway.  (I'm sure some are serious and useful, I just don't know how one is supposed to tell the difference.)  However, you may have better luck using a different protocol (lpd or raw).

Odd.  I can't reproduce this issue, and nothing has changed with the key recently.  (Release.gpg updates every time I change a package, that is not related to the key itself.)  If you try again, does it persist?