Common Issues Specifically Related to Printing
P0. HELP! I Updated the Packages and Now I Can't Print!
P1. The Packages Are Installed but No Printer Is Configured
P2. Strange Text/Graphics Printing Artifact or Lockups With Certain Files (Particularly PDF)
P3. I Am Unable to Print to a Network Printer Using IPP
P4. The Color Balance Is Wrong
P5. My Printer Seems to Be Configured but I Can't Print
P6. How Do I Know I'm Using the Samsung Driver?
P7. My USB Printer Is Inconsistent or Fails to Print and I'm Using an Old Distribution
P8. My USB Printer Is Inconsistent or Fails to Print and I'm Using the suld-scanner-usblp-fix Package
P9. Print Jobs Seem to Vanish and I'm Running SELinux
P10. My CJX-xxxx Printer Does Not Print
P11. I Updated CUPS and Now I Can't Print
P12. Print Jobs Seem to Vanish and/or the Printer Just Blinks, and I'm Not Running SELinux
P13. I Am Unable to Add a Printer Using the Configurator
P14. I Am Unable to Add a Printer Using Any Interface
P15. Printing Causes rastertospl Errors
P0. HELP! I Updated the Packages and Now I Can't Print!
If you upgraded from a version lower than 4.01.17 to 4.01.17 or greater, you may need to uninstall and re-install your printer. Otherwise, CUPS may not recognize the new ppd file and associated changes to the drivers (especially file names). Doing so will solve errors reported by CUPS for files now found. In other rare cases, something may not go smoothly in an upgrade process. You can try uninstall all your packages from this repository and then reinstalling the ones you still need. Otherwise, post to the forums for help.
P1. The Packages Are Installed but No Printer Is Configured
The packages do not autodetect printers, you will need to add it manually (using normal desktop environment tools to manage printing). In most modern distributions, the printer will configure itself once you initiate the printer setup process.
P2. Strange Text/Graphics Printing Artifact or Lockups With Certain Files (Particularly PDF)
This can be caused by several issues, but they essentially all relate to the generation of the postscript or SPL(-C) output going to the printer. There are several possible solutions, but it is difficult to know in advance which is the best.
- Installing the suld-printer-pdf-fix package may solve your problem if you meet the conditions described for it (but is not compatible with the driver2 packages). Manifestations that this may correct are an inability to print some or all pdf files while non-pdf files work correctly, extremely slow printing, or the printer refusing to print more than one document without being reset. This may also address issues of "damaged" pdf output with missing characters, etc., but only in specific situations. The package installs a work-around for the pdf/postscript converts by using cairo to generate the postscript or SPL-C output needed for the Samsung printers. Print quality may suffer, and this package could potentially break your ability to print anything at all, and it may interfere with printing to non-Samsung printers while installed. It is a hack, and so changes to several unrelated packages (CUPS, poppler, ghostscript) could invalidate the fix. On the other hand, this is probably the easiest fix to try and solves several problems when it works, assuming you have the necessary dependencies installed (Ubuntu 12.04, Debian 7.0 Wheezy, or later). This fix is most likely to help with SPL(-C) printers, but may also work with postscript printers. Credit for developing the fix goes to b1b1 in the Ubuntu Forums.
- Another approach similar to the above that may be more general is given in in this thread by b1b1. Although possibly more broadly applicable, this solution is not easily packaged and so (at least for now) must be applied manually.
- Try a different driver version (install a different suld-driver-* package). Although most printers work as well or better with the latest driver as one of the earlier ones, there are specific cases where an earlier driver may be superior. This is why the earlier versions are still available.
- Changing the printer drive to a related model sometimes helps, although it may introduce other problems, and it is not always clear what a "related" model is (usually similar model number, but not always). This requires some trial and error, and the resulting printouts are often of mediocre quality. This approach is best tried when large/color prints lock up the printer, but simple prints work fine.
- It may be worth exploring alternative approaches (check the alternatives page). In some cases, the generic printer option works surprisingly well to resolve occasional, small artifacts with printing from a pdf (especially with postscript printers).
- Particularly for problems printing with LibreOffice, modifying the behavior of lpadmin as described here may solve several printing issues.
- If all else fails, post to the forums in case someone else has solved the problem for your particular model.
P3. I am Unable to Print to a Network Printer Using IPP
Many Samsung printers do not properly support IPP. If your printer is affected, you will need to connect to your printer using LPD or raw/socket protocols. A (possibly incomplete) list of affected printers is: CLP-500, CLP-510, CLP-550, CLP-600, CLP-650, MFP-560, MFP-750, ML-1450, ML-1510, ML-1520, ML-1610, ML-1710, ML-1740, ML-1750, ML-2010, ML-2150, ML-2150, ML-2250, ML-2550S, ML-2550, ML-2560, ML-3560, ML-6060, ML-7300, SCX-4100, SCX-4200, SCX-4x16, SCX-4x20, SCX-4x21, SCX-6x20. Most of these printers are relatively old (first released in 2006 or earlier), but whether the problem has been fixed in later printers or the list is simply out of date, I don't know.
Another type of IPP problem occurs in Ubuntu 12.04 with CUPS 1.5.2, and possibly other distributions, with printers not in the above list. Some users apparently get it to work by updating to CUPS 1.5.3 or later releases. At least in Ubuntu, an "ipp14" protocol has been introduced in addition to "ipp", to enable older ipp support for printers that do not work with the new ipp. See this thread and in particular this comment for more details and a ppa until official packages are released. I do not know if these fixes will be incorporated back upstream into the CUPS project and propogate to other distributions. As of CUPS 1.5.3, another workaround is described here to activate and use the ipp14 protocol.
P4. The Color Balance Is Wrong
I don't actually know what causes this for some people with certain printers. However, in at least some cases, using the driver as installed by this repository seems to work best. In other cases, you might find better results with a direct install of the Samsung driver, the Foomatic driver, or a CUPS postscript driver. I suspect it has something to do with exactly which libraries are being invoked, but beyond that it is still a mystery.
P5. My Printer Seems to Be Configured but I Can't Print
In some cases, what appears to be a properly installed printer will still fail to print (sometimes, but not always, when the printer is automatically installed by either Foomatic or the Samsung utilities). In that case, use the Configurator or a standard CUPS tool to check the printer properties, ensuring that the correct driver is actually associated with the printer, that the printer is "enabled", and that the printer is "accepting jobs" (the specific method for doing these varies a bit, but the names should apply). If all else fails, simply delete the printer and add it as a new printer again, which will force a reset of all those settings.
P6. How Do I Know I'm Using the Samsung Driver?
Go to the printer properties (there are various ways of doing this) and look at the Make/Model. The Samsung drivers all have names in the format Samsung Series <(PS) or (SPL) or (SPL-C)>. In contrast, the Foomatic drivers all contain either "Foomatic" or "foo2qpdl" in the name, and SpliX drivers usually contain "splix" somewhere.
P7. My USB Printer Is Inconsistent or Fails to Print and I'm Using an Old Distribution
Occasionally and only in distributions released prior to 2008 (Debian 4.x (Etch), Ubuntu 7.10 (Feisty) and earlier), the USB support will be quirky or broken using these packages. I don't know why this is, but there isn't a good solution due to limitations in the way the Samsung drivers themselves work. Your best bet is to update your distribution.
P8. My USB Printer Is Inconsistent or Fails to Print and I'm Using the suld-scanner-usblp-fix Package
This is a potential side effect of the usblp fix. In some cases, you are stuck with being able to scan or print from the device, but not being able to access both functions together.
P9. Print Jobs Seem to Vanish and I'm Running SELinux
You may need to inform SELinux about the driver installation and correct file permissions, especially if you have installed the driver using the Samsung installer instead of the repository. At least with Fedora, running the following (as root/sudo) appears to enable printing:
restorecon -R -v /usr/lib64
restorecon -R -v /usr/lib
restorecon -R -v /usr/share
Another solution may be to apply the SELinux policy file that Samsung has created for the 4.00.36 and 4.00.39 drivers, available here. If you know what to do with a file like this, or know how to use other SELinux tools to authorize the mfp backend to talk to CUPS, great. If not, I cannot help you and you should investigate other resources for help (or post to the forum).
P10. My CJX-xxxx Printer Does Not Print
Do not install these packages or the Unified Driver at all, it will not work. Instead, install the printer-driver-c2esp package (older distributions instead use the c2esp package) if it is not already present and set up your printer as a Kodak ESP printer. This works for at least the CJX-1000, CJX-1050W, and CJX-2000FW. If that package is not available for distribution, you can get it here (I am not affiliated with it).
P11. I Updated CUPS and Now I Can't Print
CUPS 1.5.3, such as in Ubuntu 12.04.1 and Debian Wheezy, does not get along well with the 3.00.xx drivers. Update to a 4.xx.xx version. If you are using a current version, post to the forums.
P12. Print Jobs Seem to Vanish and/or the Printer Just Blinks, and I'm Not Running SELinux
For at least some printer models, forcing a test page to print (via a tool like system-config-printer) and/or manually printing a text file seems to clear the issue from the printer. To manually print a text file, issue the command:
lp -d printer-name a-text-file
where printer-name is the installed printer name and a-text-file is some simple text file. See this post for a slightly more detailed example; the approach has been reported to work by several users. Some applications also apparently have trouble with certain network setups: see this post to determine if this situation applies to you.
P13. I Am Unable to Add a Printer Using the Configurator
The simplest solution is to just not use the Configurator to add the printer. Use one of the default system tools or the CUPS web interface instead. However, depending on the exact behavior, there may be another solution:
- If the add printer dialog crashes after you click "Next" when it first pops up, the problem is a conflict or error in some versions of libmfp. This occurs with the driver versions 4.00.36 and 4.00.39, but seems not to be a problem with earlier or later versions. So if you can switch driver versions, the add printer routine will probably work.
- If the add printer dialog seems to work, but no printers are found, there is no known simple fix. If you also cannot detect the printer using other interfaces, then the issue is hardware, permissions, or the connection between the computer and printer. If the other interfaces work, just use those.
P14. I Am Unable to Add a Printer Using Any Interface
The first thing to try is unplugging and replugging the cable, to clear any static building or other random interference. Then, if the printer is connected by USB, try a different USB port. If shift cables does not help, it is probably an issue with the printer itself or the USB libraries in your distribution. Detection that the printer exists at all, especially when connected by USB, is not a process that involves the printer driver itself.
P15. Printing Causes rastertospl Errors
This may be due to hard-coded references to having this file in /opt/smfp-common/printer/lib. This could occur in driver 4.01.17 and all driver2 versions. A possible solution is to create a symlink: ln -s /usr/share/cups/filter/rasterspl /opt/smfp-common/printer/lib/rastertospl (might need sudo and/or creating the opt directories first). If you encounter this and it solves the problem, please post to the forum, as this is a rare error that has been hard to isolate because it is specific to certain printers using certain settings.