Install printer

From Mandriva Community Wiki

Most printers are now supported under Linux. Mandriva has additional support in order to support more printers. While it is sometimes necessary to install additional packages, Mandriva knows how to automatically detect and take care to download and install them for you.

Check the compatibility of your printer

Today, most printers are properly recognized and working properly. More and more manufacturers provide drivers for Linux distributions like Mandriva.

On the other hand, Mandriva offers extensive support that supports more hardware, including printers.

But if you still have doubts, or if you want to be sure your (future?) printer works with Mandriva Linux, the Linux Foundation makes available a knowledge base of all manufacturers and models of existing printers. You can find the printer and read a note about the performance of the printer you are looking for.

Go to the OpenPrinting database about printers compatibility under Linux

Installation procedure

Most printers are detected automatically. He should receive a message in the lower right corner of your screen and you ask your permission to download dependencies from the Mandriva repositories on the Internet.

In case it does not automatically detect your printer, open the ' Mandriva Control Center, go to the Hardware section and open Configure printers'. Finally, click 'Add, and the manager will look for available printers. You must then select your printer and the manager will install all required packages for you.

Once these steps, your printer is ready to use, no additional configuration is required.

If the manager fails to install or operate your printer, see the Troubleshooting section.

Install a Brother printer

Some users mention problems and difficulties during the installation of certain printers mark 'Brother'.

If your Brother printer is not recognized by Mandriva, you can view the page about Installing a Brother printer.

Install a Canon printer

See the Canon printers page.

Troubleshotting

Cannot scan : <printer address> : I/O error on the peripheral

This are issue essentially concerns "all-inone" printers, who can have up to three roles : printing, scanning and photocopying. The printer works fine when printing, but when you want to scan a paper using XSane, the following error dialog (or a similar one) appears :

'hpaio:/usb/Deskjet_F4100_series?serial=XXXXXXXXXXXXXX': I/O error on the peripheral.

You get this error message because the software does not manange to get access to the device correctly.

It is caused in this case by a permission problem.

To solve this issue under Mandriva, follow the following steps (for other GNU/Linux distributions, you can use this page) :

• 1) Open the Mandriva Control Center > System tab > Open an administrator console.

• 2) Copy/paste the following command :

kwrite /lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules (if you use the KDE environment)

ou

gedit /lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules (if you use the GNOME environment)

An edition window appears, commands are written in the file.

• 3) Look for the section called as following (the sections are preceded by a #) :

# libusb device nodes

• 4) Look for MODE="0664". You need to chage the number from 0664 to 0666.

The final result should be the following :

# libusb device nodes
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device",
NAME="bus/usb/$env{BUSNUM}/$env{DEVNUM}", MODE="0666"

• 5) Save the file, close the window and the console. Try to scan once again. If it does not work, try after rebooting your computer.