Skip to content
KaOS

Printer Setup

Installing the needed packages

First, you’ll need as a minimum cups. If you haven’t it already installed, do it (with pacman):

Terminal window
sudo pacman -Syu
sudo pacman -S cups

For many printers, this is not enough. Packages to add (and try) are:

Terminal window
sudo pacman -S gutenprint system-config-printer cups-pdf

To have a printer entry in system-settings:

Terminal window
sudo pacman -S print-manager

Epson printer specific (again not all will need this step) add:

Terminal window
sudo pacman -S epson-inkjet-printer-escpr

And lastly, some printers will need the foomatic-filters package:

Terminal window
sudo pacman -S foomatic-filters

Starting the installed printer

Once all is installed, start cups with:

Terminal window
sudo systemctl start org.cups.cupsd.socket

To make this auto-start on each boot:

Terminal window
sudo systemctl enable org.cups.cupsd.socket

If you are using a Hewlett-Packard printer, you’ll need also hplip, so install it too in that case:

Terminal window
sudo pacman -S hplip

You might notice after installing hplip, there is mention of “optdepends”. To get all features for hplip that you possibly can get, install all optdepends:

  • dbus-python2, for dbus support
  • sane, for scanner support
  • rpcbind: for network support

Now you can open http://localhost:631 and add your printer to CUPS. One note about log in, the name is actually “root” (without quotes), not your root username.

Troubleshooting

Epson-multi-functional printers

When installing all the above mentioned packages does not result in cups recognizing your Epson printer, there is a chance that sane blocks this. To correct this issue, create a udev-rule for usb-printers as root, including a scanner entry called /etc/udev/rules.d/10-usbprinter.rules, with the following content:

Terminal window
ATTR{idVendor}=="04b8", ATTR{idProduct}=="0851", MODE:="0660", GROUP:="lp" ENV{libsane_matched}:="yes"

To get the needed idVendor and idProduct run:

Terminal window
lsusb

and look for the Epson printer line, example:

Terminal window
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 04b8:0851 Seiko Epson Corp. Stylus SX410

Where the first ID number is idVendor, second is idProduct.

Just having sane installed is not enough to get the scanner fuction to work for these devices. Easy solution is to edit /etc/sane.d/epson2.conf as root, uncomment the last (usb) line:

Terminal window
# For libusb support for unknown scanners use the following command
# usb
<product ID> <device ID>
# e.g.:
#usb 04b8 0851

And again use the correct idVendor and idProduct number for your device. Install skanlite with:

Terminal window
sudo pacman -S skanlite

to have an easy GUI for scanning.

Extra Troubleshooting for scanning with Epson Stylus cx 5600

/etc/sane.d/epson2.conf stays the same as in example above

/etc/sane.d/epson.conf comment all lines

in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf uncomment the line epson2 all other lines remains commented

Troubleshooting Samsung Printers

If the installed printer packages do not result in a working Samsung printer you probably will need to get the proprietary Samsung driver.

Go here: http://www.samsungdrivers.net/samsung-ml-2160-driver/ and download linux unified driver, the driver archive is named:

Terminal window
UnifiedLinuxDriver_1.01.tar.gz

Copy this archive to /home/user/Downloads and extract there.

“user” is your username of your KaOS install. Then open a terminal and type:

Terminal window
sudo /home/user/Downloads/cdroot/autorun

Follow the instructions to have a fully working Samsung printer.

Also see Post of Feb 2015 in this thread.