Canon MF4350d - Printer Scanner setup

[audeojude]

Hello again everyone,

I really needed printing to work, so I solved the problem by wiping everything and then installing a 32 bit system. Using the official Canon 32 bit debs means I can print again.
David

I use so much ram on my desktop systems running virtual systems and dozens of windows in firefox that going back to 32 bit would hurt. I average 1.5 gigs memory usage just for the webbrowser. an average of another 4 gigs or better for virtual systems and then all the other stuff as well as the base OS.. I have 8 gigs total right now and when I upgrade will probably go to 32 to 64 gigs or ram so I can run the os off of a ram disk as well as all the virtual systems.

I admit I am not typical in usage and it is a bit over the top but it's how I work. If I go back to limited ram and speed I feel like taking a hammer to the computer after a while.
Scott

[DaneM]

Alright, so it would appear that the first step in making this printer work on Linux is to abandon trying to make it work on Ubuntu. It's probably just as obtuse for any .deb distribution, but I haven't tested that.

Having gotten fed-up with the state of Ubuntu's GUI, I've been looking for another distro that would meet my needs for some time, now. Linux Mint is OK but it's still just Ubuntu with some tweaks and additional software. It can be made to work fairly well with KDE or MATE, but ultimately, it's been insufficient, and more to the point, it wouldn't *&$!*% print!

So, I started looking into RPM-based distros (which I'd previously sworn off). I tried OpenSuse, but found that not only was it just as obtuse and hard to hand-configure as ever (that is, using anything other than YaST, which is essentially a GUI frontend to a bunch of ugly hacks), but the UFR2 RPMs wouldn't even install on it. No OpenSuse.

Then, I tried Mageia. Mageia is a completely free fork of Mandriva (formerly Mandrake), and since I'd used Mandrake before Ubuntu was around, I thought to give it a try. Mandiva's always annoyed me a lot because of its built-in paywall for media codecs and more-or-less anything else useful; but Mageia is completely free, so that hitch is gone. It's only in version 1, but it's a lot more polished than I expected, though the installation media selection for 64-bit is a bit odd. Here's what I did to make my printer work:

1) Download the Mageia "open-source software only" DVD. This DVD installs either 32-bit, or 64-bit, depending on your architecture, and it's the only way to get a 64-bit install, short of using the problematic network install CD. (I tried the net install, and it went badly.)
2) Install Mageia by booting from the DVD; the process is very straight-forward. I chose the "Custom" desktop option, and it works well for me. I haven't tried their Gnome offering, but since I..."dislike"...Gnome 3, it's unimportant to me. Ubuntu users should be aware that you'll need to input 2 passwords: 1 for your user, and 1 for root. Mageia doesn't use sudo.
3) Run rpmdrake ("Install/Remove Software" in the KDE menu). Go to Options > Media Manager, and click "Add". Select "Full Set of Sources" and let it do its thing. Then, also in the Media Manager, check whatever boxes you think are needed. Be sure to enable non-free and tainted repos for media codecs, etc. You can install that stuff later.
4) Search for and install "Task-Printing". Also make sure that "Task-Printing-Canon" gets installed, to be on the safe side. Scanning doesn't currently work, but there's also a package for that, should you feel inclined to fiddle.
5) Download the 2.40 (or latest) version of the UFR2 driver from Canon's web site. Save it somewhere sensible.
6) Decompress/extract the UFR2 driver files and navigate to the 64-bit RPMs via the GUI file browser. While you can install them via the command line, they'll probably give you crap about missing dependencies; the GUI installer will take care of that for you. Double click on "cndrvcups-common-2.40-2.x86_64.rpm" and say "yes" to installing dependencies. Then do the same for "cndrvcups-ufr2-us-2.40-2.x86_64.rpm" (or "cndrvcups-ufr2-uk-2.40-2.x86_64.rpm for the UK version").
7) Open a terminal (Konsole) and type:

su
<root password>
service cups restart
exit #this will log you out of root, for safety

8.) Now, you can go to the printer config tool by either typing, "system-config-printer" in a terminal, or KMenu > Tools > System Tools > Printing. You may need to type your user or root password.
9) Select network printer (or USB if that's your connection type). For network printer, you'll have to have set the printer's IP address to static (see the printer's manual). Type that address into the "find network printer" box, and click the "find" button. In my case, I instantly got it to see the printer's service and port. You should make sure you're NOT in power saving mode when you do this.
10) Click "next" and continue on until it's given the printer a name, etc. Done!

I printed a test page, and it came out quickly and properly with no tweaking at all needed. I've since adjusted the settings to my liking (including duplex and toner saving), but that's just "icing on the cake." If you want to use the scanner, you can try to get it working through "scannerdrake" or "system-config-printer", or via various sane-based CLI tools. Good luck with that...

On the upside, my model scans flawlessly to USB stick (plugged directly into the printer's USB port), so I just plug, press "scan", then re-plug the stick into my PC...et voila!

I hope this helps someone. I know this isn't entirely appropriate for an Ubuntu forum, but since the problem seems unsolvable in Ubuntu, this is the best solution I could post for your benefit.

Note: I've thus far only installed Mageia in a VirtualBox (Win7 host), but since the printer is connected over network, and I'm using a "bridged adapter", I don't think it matters. I'll be installing Mageia properly soon, and will report any problems I have with the printer that haven't come up on VirtualBox "hardware". I don't expect there to be any.

Good luck to you all, and thanks for your commendable participation with attempting to solve this problem!

--Dane

P.S. Attached is a CUPS test printout, scanned via USB drive, in case anyone wants "proof" of my wild claims. (Quality is reduced to comply with size limits for this forum.)

[audeojude]

I suppose that is one way of getting it to work replace the operating system.

I used to use mandrivia back when it was mandrake... dark ages of linux. I quit because of rpm hell. I have never gone back to a non deb/debian based os since then.

[DaneM]

audeojude,

I don't know if RPM hell has been fully solved, but I get the impression from fans I've known of the various RPM distros that it's much better than it used to be. So far, I've not fully "dug into" Mageia, but it does show a lot of promise over the old Mandrake (which I preferred before I switched to Ubuntu around 2001). Most of all, I consider it an option because it doesn't retain the crappy Mandriva/Mandrake paywall for useful software (that's free on other distros).

I'll post back if I run into significant problems.

[Nath A]

Thanks a lot . Finally got the scanner to work

[DaneM]

You did?!

What did you do to make the scanner work? I've finally gotten printing online, but scanning has yet remained impossible for me.

(Of course, we're using different models, but if it works for you, just maybe it'll work for me, right?)

Edit: I was able to scan to USB drive via the printer's build-in USB port. Is this what you meant? If I could get it to go from the scanner to my computer, though, that would be awesome.

[DaneM]

One more thing:

Since I promised a follow-up on Mageia, here it is. I realize that this is an Ubuntu forum, so I hope I'm not out-of-line by promoting anther distro for the purpose of solving this problem. Ubuntu is a good distro, so I'm not advocating a switch unless you feel like you have good enough reason to do so.

I've installed Mageia to my hard drive (with Win 7 on another drive; dual-boot), and so far, I've run into no problems of any note. Learning which repositories ("media sources") have the stuff I want is taking a bit of time, and since it's such a new distro, the repos are lacking a few newer or less common things, like WINE 1.4/1.5 (currently there's only 1.3), and console game emulators. Still, source code will get it all to me in a pinch. (Notably, getting Mednafen to work required altering a symlink for the Nvidia drivers, but it was trivial enough once I figured it out.)

The printer is still working great, and since the device has a USB port built-in, I can scan well enough (and then "sneaker-net" the drive to my PC).

The distro, itself, has proven solid and reliable (so far), with all the features I care about. "RPM Hell" appears to be a thing of the past, these days, since the advent and polishing of package management tools that are smart enough to detect endless circles of dependencies, versioning problems, etc. I have yet to run into a serious problem with the RPMs, even after adding a bunch of repositories ("media sources") and installing/removing/upgrading a bunch of stuff.

As noted above, I'm still quite interested in getting scanning (directly to my PC, that is) to work; but if it doesn't, I won't have too much reason to complain, since I can accomplish what I need to, regardless. Notably, the printer's drivers and Mageia's software for dealing with them (CUPS, KDE's utilities, and others) allow full access to such nice features as toner-saving, duplex, quality control, paper size/source, etc. The driver tries to check "ink" (toner, actually) levels when connected via network, whereas when connected via USB, it realizes that that feature isn't supported, and says as much.

Installing the printer via USB is insanely easy (especially by contrast to the rest of this thread): you just plug in the cable, click "Add Printer" on the utility, and it'll find the printer, pick the UFR2 driver for you, and assign a pretty sensible name. Voila! Of course, you have to download and install the UFR2 driver manually, for either connection type (as instructed in my previous post), but that's very easy, as well.

All in all, I'm extremely happy with Mageia, and am even enjoying some nice features that Ubuntu lacked (such as MSec, which makes IPTables, anti-rootkit scanning, and other things quite easy for anyone).

Bottom line (as I see it): if you choose to switch for whatever reason (including to get the printer to work), you won't be disappointed. It's really unfortunate that the UFR2 drivers hate Ubuntu (and most other distros), but at least there's a good alternative available.

Cheers, everyone!

--Dane

[Nath A]

You did?!

What did you do to make the scanner work? I've finally gotten printing online, but scanning has yet remained impossible for me.

(Of course, we're using different models, but if it works for you, just maybe it'll work for me, right?)

Edit: I was able to scan to USB drive via the printer's build-in USB port. Is this what you meant? If I could get it to go from the scanner to my computer, though, that would be awesome.

Yeah it worked .Infact I am using a different model too (cannon mf4412)
Just follow the instructions on the first page.download sane http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=...e-backends.git (remember download master from the first line of the list.click on snapshot)..
Run nautilus as root create a folder 'sane-backends' in the /opt folder.
Untar the downloaded file and copy the contents to /opt/sane-backends/ that you just created and just follow the instructions

Good Luck.

[bjtuna]

Oh, man. I just bought an imageCLASS D420 and I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 64bit. Reading this thread is like deja vu. I don't know what I'm thinking but I'm about to take a stab at compiling these stupid bugged out Canon drivers. Will post here if I learn anything.

[bjtuna]

Okay, I figured it out, and my imageCLASS D420 is now printing in Ubuntu 11.10 64 bit. The answer was here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...7&postcount=36

In short: using alien on the RPMs works fine *EXCEPT* that they try to write to /usr/lib64, which doesn't exist on our systems. So if you symlink /usr/lib64 to /usr/lib and install the alien'd debs, you'll be good:

Start-to-finish:

Download the latest Linux drivers (v2.40 as of writing) on the USA Canon site.

sudo -i
tar xzvf Linux_UFRII_PrinterDriver_V240_us_EN.tar.gz
cd Linux_UFRII_PrinterDriver_V240_us_EN
cd 64-bit_Driver
cd RPM
ln -s /usr/lib /usr/lib64
alien -k -c cndrvcups-common-2.40-2.x86_64.rpm
alien -k -c cndrvcups-ufr2-us-2.40-2.x86_64.rpm
dpkg -i cndrvcups-common_2.40-2_amd64.deb
dpkg -i cndrvcups-ufr2-us_2.40-2_amd64.deb

Then install the printer with the Ubuntu GUI.

Note: I did a lot of crap before I finally got this to work, including compiling and installing the drivers from source and going down all the same roads as DaneM, which involved installing all kinds of dependency libs. So, I don't know for sure if this is going to work on its own for someone who hasn't done the same, but my guess is that it will.

Hopefully this helps.

-Brian