Ubuntu – Adding Canon Pixma MX860 to Ubuntu 14.04

canonnetworkingprinting

I have a Canon Pixma MX680 all-in-one hard-wired to my LAN.

Trying to add a printer using Settings | Printer | Add Printer | Network Printer gave me a whole bunch of choices–Find Network Printer, AppSocket/HP Jetdirect, ipp, https, ipp14, and so on. I tried to use "Find Network Printer" using my printer's IP address (no hits), then its MAC address (changing the usual colon separators to the apparently-Ubuntu-standard hyphens), and it seemed to find the printer, and I chose the driver from the list, and it showed up in the Printers box, but I couldn't print a test page.

I removed the printer and tried this approach from the command line. It seemed to work, and again the printer shows up in the Printers box. Still, I'm unable to print a test page. Looking at Properties | Settings, I see that Printer State is "Processing – printer not responding; will retry," then going back to "Processing." Print queue shows my test pages lined up (and I deleted them–or cancelled?–what's the difference?).

As suggested by that page, I installed XSane, which was able to find the printer's scanner and scan successfully.

So, it doesn't seem that it ought to be a big step to get the printer going–eh?

Any help gratefully received. If an answer requires undoing what I did, please let me know how to do that. If it requires typing things into terminal mode, I'd very much appreciate an explanation of what the lines do (I've been working with computers a long time, but I'm completely new to Linux). Many thanks.

Best Answer

I simply installed the cups-backend-bjnp package in the Ubuntu 14.04 repository to find my MX850 after upgrading from 12.04.

sudo apt-get install cups-backend-bjnp

Printing

The network printer can be installed if you enter the URI manually. When adding a new printer, select EnterURI from the devices list and enter cnijnet:/01-23-45-67-89-AB where 01-23-45-67-89-AB is the MAC address of the printer. You have to manually select the printer model for the driver, but everything prints as it should.

If that doesn't work, follow the manual instructions from http://linux.wikia.com/wiki/Getting_Canon_PIXMA_to_work_on_Linux:

$ cnijnetprn --search auto 
<...Wait for system search...>
network cnijnet:/00-1E-8F-B6-E0-1A "Canon MX860 series" "Canon-MX860-series_00-1E-8F-B6-E0-1A"

$ locate mx860.ppd
/usr/share/cups/model/cnmx860.ppd
/usr/share/ppd/cnmx860.ppd
$ sudo /usr/sbin/lpadmin -p CanonMX860 -m cnmx860.ppd -v cnijnet:/00-1E-8F-B6-E0-1A -E

the -p option specifies printer name, the -m option specified ppd file. The ppd file for your printer should be included in your binary driver package and at this point should have been installed in /usr/share/ppd. The -v option specifies device uri (copy it from cnijnetprn's output).

Scanning

For scanning, edit /etc/sane.d/pixma.conf and add the line bjnp://10.0.0.20 (the Pixma's IP address). List the devices to make sure Ubuntu can find it with

$ scanimage -L
device `pixma:MX860_10.0.0.20' is a CANON Canon PIXMA MX860 multi-Function peripheral

You can additionally edit out unnecessary backends (all but pixma) from /etc/sane.d/dll.conf. That should speed the discovery up a bit. For more details, check out man sane-pixma.

Although I couldn't find any documentation as to why or how, the Canon network printer discovery protocol doesn't work right in 11.10 as it does in previous versions – perhaps a discovery timeout issue. Still, everything is up and running now.

Ubuntu – Should I set up the CUPS Printing to use IPP, LPD or URL

LPD is an old standard, IPP is newer.

Ubuntu uses the Common UNIX Printing System ("CUPS") to handle printing. CUPS uses the Internet Printing Protocol ("IPP") as the basis for managing print jobs and queues. Other protocols are also supported (LPD, SMB, AppSocket a.k.a. JetDirect), some with reduced functionality.

LPD/LPR is still commonly used and works quite well but it doesn't provide much control for users on the printer settings per print job.

Both the LPD and JetDirect/AppSocket protocols can be used over the Internet today, however neither of these protocols provides authentication services, access control, and all of the document management and formatting (including printer-specific commands) must be handled by the machine sending the document.

IPP is preferred as it uses bidirectional communication which gives you more feedback and control.

Some printers may not support IPP.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – How to add a Canon Pixma MX860 network printer

Printing

Scanning

Ubuntu – Should I set up the CUPS Printing to use IPP, LPD or URL

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