I found that my printer was no longer functioning. Documents sent to print were held with notification that the PPD version was incompatible with the Gutenprint version.
To view the print queue I opened the KDE System Settings and navigated to Printers. There selecting the printer, an Epson CX3200, I observed the entries in the print queue. The error message shown at the right end of the line was:
The PPD version (5.2.9) is not compatible with Gutenprint 5.2.10-pre2.
Reading on the Internet gave a number of items to try. I pursued some of these before updating cups-driver-gutenprint from the experimental repository.
cups-genppdupdate
cups-genppdupdate can be used to regenerate the CUPS and Gutenprint PPD files.
As my normal user I ran the command, which reported a missing driver.
ERROR: Unable to find driver “escp2-cx3200”!
Unable to retrieve PPD file for /etc/cups/ppd/EPSON-Stylus-CX3200.ppd!
Failed to update any PPD files
File Permissions
Often searching the Internet to find answers to issues, one of the suggestions is to change the permissions on a file or folder.
I wanted to find the location of the ppd files and to see what the assigned permissions were.
To list the files within the ppd directory:
# ls /etc/cups/ppd
EPSON-Stylus-CX3200.ppd
And to see the permissions of the files:
# ls -Al /etc/cups/ppd
-rw-r–r– 1 root root 149115 Apr 28 06:52 EPSON-Stylus-CX3200.ppd
I only used chmod to change the permissions, not going further with changing of owner and group.
chmod 666 /etc/cups/ppd/*
After making the change I tried reprinting, but the error continued to exist:
Reinstall Package cups-driver-gutenprint
For the re-installation of the package cups-driver-gutenprint I ran the command:
apt-get install –reinstall cups-driver-gutenprint
This highlighted a still get the error re missing drivers
ERROR: Unable to find driver “escp2-cx3200”!
System Settings Add Printer (CUPS Configuration)
With no printer configured I looked to the addition of the printer, but based on the CUPS drivers, not PPD.
Ensure that your printer is turned on and connected.
From the System Settings – Printers configuration I selected Add Printer.
To add a new printer I selected Epson and then scrolled down through the list of printers.
The printer, which I was looking for CX3200, was not listed.
I tried 3 or 4 of the most likely options without success.
CUPS Web Browser
CUPS can be administered using a web browser. I navigated to http://localhost:631.
Here I found that the choice for the drivers, was the same list of manufacturers and models as shown under the System Settings.
system-config-printer
I read about about Debian’s system-config-printer, a graphical interface for the printer configuration.
From the command line (own account not root) I ran the command. The window which popped up was a variation on the CUPS printer configuration, which I had already used. It was using the same list of printer drivers so no advantage there for me.
Debian XFCE New Installation
In the past week I had replaced Windows XP on a Panasonic CF-W2 Toughbook with Debian with XFCE window manager.
Plugging the printer into the laptop. I opened up the printer configuration and followed through the addition of the Epson CX3200 printer. This is an easy configuration to follow with the printer detected and default configuration completed. I was able to print shortly afterwards.
On the original computer I had deleted the ppd configuration file for the CS3200 printer. I copied the configuration from the laptop /etc/cups/ppd directory to a USB memory pen drive and plugged it into the main computer, opening its directory.
Following the Add New Printer routine in KDE System Settings once again, I selected to use the ppd file on the USB stick.
Back once again to using the printer and observing the print queue I once more had the error
The PPD version (5.2.9) is not compatible with Gutenprint 5.2.10-pre2
I was back to the start once more!
Experimental Repository
The computer mostly runs on Debian Testing. I have used Experimetal for some packages, for example Iceweasel. The installation of the package is given below.
#apt-get -t experimental install cups-driver-gutenprint
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
libgutenprint2 printer-driver-gutenprint
Suggested packages:
gutenprint-locales gutenprint-doc
The following packages will be upgraded:
cups-driver-gutenprint libgutenprint2 printer-driver-gutenprint
3 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 471 not upgraded.
Need to get 1,440 kB of archives.
After this operation, 29.7 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n]
Get:1 http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/debian/ unstable/main libgutenprint2 amd64 5.2.10-2 [1,036 kB]
Get:2 http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/debian/ unstable/main cups-driver-gutenprint all 5.2.10-2 [1,642 B]
Get:3 http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/debian/ unstable/main printer-driver-gutenprint amd64 5.2.10-2 [402 kB]
Fetched 1,440 kB in 0s (1,856 kB/s)
Reading changelogs… Done
(Reading database … 252450 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack …/libgutenprint2_5.2.10-2_amd64.deb …
Unpacking libgutenprint2 (5.2.10-2) over (5.2.10~pre2-2) …
Preparing to unpack …/cups-driver-gutenprint_5.2.10-2_all.deb …
Unpacking cups-driver-gutenprint (5.2.10-2) over (5.2.10~pre2-2) …
Preparing to unpack …/printer-driver-gutenprint_5.2.10-2_amd64.deb …
Unpacking printer-driver-gutenprint (5.2.10-2) over (5.2.10~pre2-2) …
Processing triggers for cups (1.7.2-3) …
Updating PPD files for gutenprint …
PPD for printer EPSON_Stylus_CX3200 updated
Processing triggers for man-db (2.6.7.1-1) …
Setting up libgutenprint2 (5.2.10-2) …
Setting up printer-driver-gutenprint (5.2.10-2) …
Setting up cups-driver-gutenprint (5.2.10-2) …
Once again back to my document for printing – success!
