(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

What is that unearthly magic you do to keep Canon printers to work - and even better than in Windows?

Is it so, that Puppy (and Fatdog) is the only distro where the Canon inkjet printers work out-of-the-box?

How did you do it?

Since you haven't identified your Canon model or the printer driver you are using, it's hard to say. Your other posts refer to an MP140 running as a Windows shared printer, but you left those threads unfinished.

Which threads I have left unfinished?

Not this:

And yes, it's the MP140.
Had to change the OS when the old MoBo went bust.

Athlon XP became replaced by i3.


http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic. ... 084#588084

I re-read the more recent post here and I'm still not clear about your printer setup. Did these problems with hangups occur when the printer was being used as a server or a local printer? What OS were the clients using? Did the hangups come from using Mint as the server or the client? And how did it become a 64-bit issue?

Are you still running this printer off a Puppy machine using a Samba server? Which Puppy? Which Samba? With the Gutenprint driver? What driver are the clients using? How are you doing it with Fatdog?

Well, maybe I was not clear: The problems didn't occur when using Puppy or Fatdog, but with virtually every other distro.

I tried the official Canon drivers, Gutenprint, Foomatic, Michael-Cruz ppa, ...
Nothing worked. But with Puppy/Fatdog it works out-of-the-box.

It looks like my only option is going to be Fatdog. The downside is that in case of a problem, I can't use another Linux to read out the stuff from the disk, because all the stuff is inside savefiles.

turboscrew wrote:Well, maybe I was not clear.

With all due respect, it's still not clear. Are you talking about running your MP140 as a local USB-connected printer or as a networked Samba print server?

And what driver are you successfully using in Puppy/Fatdog?

The printer is connected to my desktop (running Debian for a change) via USB and CUPS/Samba is used to offer shared access to the printer (and some disk partitions) to other machines in the LAN.

I checked: I booted Fatdog 621 from an memory stick instead of Debian, opened localhost:631 and added a printer: CUPS + Gutenprint.
It worked fine.

I have tried the same with many other distros the same way (and some different ways too) with no luck. Printing starts normally, but at t6he end of the page it starts printing about one line per minute. At the very end, normal printing is (usuallu) back. Printin one page takes about 10 minutes.

With Puppy/Fatdog printing happens a bit quicker than with Windows - not a sign of any problems.

I just have to "advertise" Puppy/Fatdog to everyone loosing his/her mind over PIXMA MP xxx printer problems. ;-D

Thanks. I can't think of any reason why the CUPS system in Puppy/Fatdog would work better with your printer than in other Linuxes. Other than maybe it is "closer to the metal" and there is less queuing/handling/processing of the print job.

turboscrew wrote:It looks like my only option is going to be Fatdog. The downside is that in case of a problem, I can't use another Linux to read out the stuff from the disk, because all the stuff is inside savefiles.

Out of topic: You can save your session in a directory instead of in a savefile. Works well if the underlying filesystem is ext2/3/4. With this, no more problems of savefiles getting full; and other Linuxes can read the files too without having to know about loopback mounted file etc.

The easiest way for it to work is to create a directory called /fd64save.ext4 (yes, a directory, not a file) in the root directory of the partition you want to use to keep your session.

Note: this only works with Fatdog, not with mainline Puppies.

Thanks, iamesbond, I guess I need to look into that.
Then I could install Fatdog. Is it still frugal?
(I became to realize that full install of Lupu wasn't such a good idea.)

BTW, which CUPS-library fors Fatdog use?

I found these:
./usr/lib/libcups.so
./usr/lib/libcups.so.2
./aufs/pup_ro/usr/lib64/libcups.so
./aufs/pup_ro/usr/lib64/libcups.so.2

Not libcupsys2 nor libcups2, but libcups?
Is that the "standard" or is it puppy-specific version?

The mystery is solved.
The problem was USB port.
I tried with couple of USB2.0/3.0 ports.
When I tried with USB1.1/2.0 port (Debian) the printer worked fine.

I wonder if Puppy/Fatdog is more "flexible" when it comes to USB ports?