HOWTO: Lexmark Printers

[black hole sun]

Hello everyone. This is a ubuntu-adopted version of the gentoo howto (which I originally wrote) http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Lexmark_Printers

Printers that this howto covers (there are many, many others, but these are the printers that have been confirmed to work so far (also note that Dell's printers are merely rebranded Lexmarks):

Lexmark 5700 (black & white only)
Lexmark X1100
Lexmark X1110
Lexmark X1130
Lexmark X1140
Lexmark X1150
Lexmark X1180
Lexmark X1185
Lexmark Z513
Lexmark Z515
Lexmark Z715
Lexmark Z55
Lexmark Z615
Lexmark Z705
Lexmark Z605
Lexmark Z600
Lexmark Z25
Dell A920
Z65 (z65 driver)
Lexmark Z33 (z35 driver)
Lexmark Z33 (z35 driver)

With that said, let's get to it!

The driver we'll be using is the z600 one, which can be found here. Even if your printer isn't a z600 this driver works with a LOT of Lexmark's, so try this driver first.

Download the driver, save it to a desktop folder such as `lexmark` (I say _folder_ because extracting the driver is a messy process!).

Obviously, exclude the comments to the right of the hash (#) marks, I include them only to explain the commands.

$ mkdir lexmark
$ mv CJLZ600LE-CUPS-1.0-1.TAR.gz lexmark # move the package to a folder. optional, but recommended. 
$ tar -xvzf CJLZ600LE-CUPS-1.0-1.TAR.gz # extract the driver.
$ tail -n +143 z600cups-1.0-1.gz.sh > install.tar.gz # the sh script is broken for newer systems. use `tail` to extract the binary portion of the script.
$ tar -xvzf install.tar.gz # extract the contents produced by tail
$ alien -t z600cups-1.0-1.i386.rpm # convert unusable rpm packages to tgz.
$ alien -t z600llpddk-2.0-1.i386.rpm # convert unusable rpm packages to tgz.
$ sudo tar xvzf  z600llpddk-2.0.tgz -C / # extract the tgz's to / putting the files in their right place
$ sudo tar xvzf z600cups-1.0.tgz -C / # extract the tgz's to / putting the files in their right place
$ sudo ldconfig # DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP or your printer backend won't find required libraries
$ cd /usr/share/cups/model
$ sudo gunzip Lexmark-Z600-lxz600cj-cups.ppd.gz # unzip the ppd, which should _not_ be gzipped

The driver is now installed. Restart the cups daemon:

/etc/rc2.d/S19cupsys restart

Check whether the printer backend works;

$ cd /usr/lib/cups/backend
$ ./z600

The output of the above command should be _similar_ to this:

direct z600:/dev/usb/lp0 "Lexmark Lexmark Z600 Series" "Lexmark Printer"

If you get no output, mount the usb filesystem.

Add this to your /etc/fstab file:

usbfs         /proc/bus/usb usbfs   devgid=14,devmode=0660 0 0

Then just type: sudo mount usbfs. That should fix it.

Now simply set up your printer through the System->Administration->Printing in gnome. Make sure you select the z600 driver, and you're golden.

For KDE users...well, you'll have to use whatever printer dialogue that KDE provides.

There you have it! If you need any help, post to this thread.