DYMO label writer How-To

[bpalone]

This is a How-To for getting and installing the CUPS drivers for the DYMO label writers.

This was written for and by my experience in and with Ubuntu 8.04. It should be of help with other releases and distros.

According to their information (at this writing) their drivers support the following models:

LabelWriter 400
LabelWriter 400 Turbo
LabelWriter DUO
LabelWriter Twin Turbo
LabelWriter 300
LabelWriter 330
LabelWriter 330 Turbo
LabelMANAGER 450
LabelPOINT 350

The first thing to do is go to this site:

https://global.dymo.com/enUS/RNW/RNW...hp&p_faqid=101

Then scroll down to the Linux section and download the DYMO SDK and CUPS drivers for Linux.

I am going to describe how to do most of this from the GUI, there will be a little bit of command line stuff done. If someone wants to pitch in and redo this including how to do it from the command line, please do. (I am still getting to know Linux and don't feel that I'm qualified to lead someone down the command line path. Yet anyway.)

The next thing to do is go to where you downloaded tarball from DYMO and double click it to unpack it. When that is done, go into the newly created directory called “dymo-cups-drivers-1.0.1” and open a text file called “INSTALL”. This is their instructions, and is what I am about to embellish upon.

Next you need to go to the Synaptic Package Manager and install some headers and libraries. They are as follows:

libcupsimage2-dev
g++

Once these packages are installed, we need to Open a terminal window to do the command line stuff.

Now that you have your terminal window open, change directory (cd) into dymo-cups-drivers-1.0.1 wherever that may be located. Which depends on what you did when you extracted the files. Once there you are ready to start to make this all come together,

In the terminal enter the following: sudo ./configure (then hit enter)

When that finishes enter this: sudo make

Now to do what we came here for, enter this: sudo make install

CUPS should now have everything it needs to print to the DYMO printer.


These are fairly new drivers and SDK so I don't think there is anything out there made for just these label printers. I could be wrong, I have been in the past. What I have done is gone into OO-Writer and created some templates with the page size set to the label size. Seems to work just fine.

I hope this helps someone out and they find it before they have done a lot searching. I know it would of saved me a fair amount of time.

[Keith_Beef]

Thanks a lot for that, bpalone.

I had got the sticky label half of my Dymo LaberWriter Duo to work, but was not satisfied with the right margins, and in any case the tape half of the printer was not working at all.

This driver from Dymo works better, installed perfectly well with your instructions, but still I can't find out how to print tapes...

I added two Local Printers, one of them using the LabelWriter DUO Label driver, the other using the LabelWriter DUO Tape driver. Both of them set themselves to using the following address:

usb://DYMO/LabelWriter%20DUO%20Label?serial=06102216133691

So I looked in the Device Manager (System, Preferences, Hardware Information) and looked at connected USB devices.

I saw a device listed as LabelWriter Duo Tape 128 on

printer.physical_device /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_922_1d_06102216133691_if1

Now, the label printing part of the printer has the following:

printer.physical_device /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_922_1d_06102216133691_if0

The URL given in the printer configuration dialog (see above) has the 06102216133691 number, but not the if0 or if1... so I can't see how to make the difference between the two halves of the printer...

Can anybody enlighten me as to how to get the tape printing side working?


K.

[dslax27]

It's been a few months since the above was posted and Dynmo updated their site with a new driver (v1.0.3).

I receive an error when installing the driver on the Dynmo site using the above directions (intended for v.1.0.1).

My terminal outputs the following when I get the install error

doug@doug-laptop:~/Desktop/dymo-cups-drivers-1.0.3$ sudo ./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
/home/doug/Desktop/dymo-cups-drivers-1.0.3/missing: Unknown `--run' option
Try `/home/doug/Desktop/dymo-cups-drivers-1.0.3/missing --help' for more information
configure: WARNING: `missing' script is too old or missing
checking for gawk... gawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for cups-config... /usr/bin/cups-config
checking for style of include used by make... GNU
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables... 
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking dependency style of gcc... gcc3
checking for cupsMarkOptions in -lcups... yes
checking for cupsRasterReadHeader in -lcupsimage... no
configure: error: Can't find cupsimage library

Two questions:

1. Does this bug log mean that there is no solution for the above problem yet?
2. Is there a way to get access to v1.0.1 that does work?

[sigmason]

This tutorial works fine on Ubuntu 8.10 with the Dymo provided 1.0.3 drivers.

The only caution I have is to send ONLY postscript to this printer from the system. You *CAN* print to the cups queue from Windows computers via IPP using the standard Windows driver (it works fine), but if you print from gedit or even use the "Print Test Page" functionality in (system-config-printer) you'll spit out label after label of badly printed junk that looks like it should be correct, but isn't if you look closely and even if you print 1 test page you'll get dozens and dozens of labels.

I used a page I created with OpenOffice that is formatted to fit the printer and then exported from OpenOffice as a PDF. If you try to print that very same file from OpenOffice it will not switch to landscape. However, if you open the PDF you exported from OpenOffice with Document Viewer you can print it fine from there. This works because now it's in PDF and therefore it's postscript.

So just be careful, if you're not near this thing and you print a test page the default way (like say a network print server), I can picture a floor full of wasted labels.

My printers to test with: Dymo LabelWriter 310, Dymo LabelWriter 320, Dymo LabelWriter 330, Dymo LableWriter 330 Turbo. All exhibit this behavior.

[Tictoon]

With LabelWriter 400, it gives me 2 labels for the test page.

[iBurger]

Anyone been successful to use gLabels with a Dymo label writer?

[sebiXVI]

Hi,

my LabelWriter worked out-of-the-box until Intrepid. With Jaunty, I can install the printer as well (CUPS gives Dymo/Costar as option) and I get printings from it.

However, I cannot set the pagesize correctly. I use "large address" labels, attempting to print always spans the output over several labels (3 or 4). Seems it internally sets the pagesize to A4?

Any hints on this?

Thx,
Sebastian

[DeadMetal]

Hi,

my LabelWriter worked out-of-the-box until Intrepid. With Jaunty, I can install the printer as well (CUPS gives Dymo/Costar as option) and I get printings from it.

However, I cannot set the pagesize correctly. I use "large address" labels, attempting to print always spans the output over several labels (3 or 4). Seems it internally sets the pagesize to A4?

Any hints on this?

Thx,
Sebastian

I have the exact same problem. Does anyone have a solution regarding this?

[sebiXVI]

Hi,

yes, there is a solution. This topic is been discussed as bug #35722 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ps/+bug/357732. In this thread there is a different pstopdf file that corrects the problem for me.

However, meanwhile an updated cups package (1.3.9-17ubuntu2) has been released that already contains the fix. So please try upgrading, if that doesn't work, follow the instructions given in the above thread.

Regards,
Sebastian

[Keith_Beef]

This might automatically be fixed by upgrading to Jaunty Jackalope, then...

Thanks for the information.