Another thought:

You may also have some issues with other versions of the two cnijfilter files from your installation attempts. Before attempting the dpkg --force-architecture commands, it would probably be smart to clean up the older files.

If you issue the commands:
dpkg -L cnijfilter-common
dpkg -L cnijfilter-ip1800series (or whatever the second cnijfilter file was called)
and you find a lengthy output with files in /usr/lib etc, then there are files installed that may cause problems. In this case

dpkg --purge cnijfilter-common
dpkg --purge cnijfilter-ip1800series (or whatever the second cnijfilter file was called)

This should remove the installed files and their associated configuration files.

1 members found this post helpful.

Robbssi and Mark

Thank you very much for your help. I tried the instructions in Robbssi's last post. They went through without a hitch but still no printing. Then I thought to look in printer properties/drivers and lo and behold there was canon ip1800 driver. I selected it and there was the printer. Test page printed fine. I shall now try to print a document and if that works I hope to use Ubuntu for most of my computing.

Thanks again

John

Excellent. Glad to hear it.

This is not now solved. I was reading a report on how you should install Kubuntu with Ubuntu then you can swap between them using F10. I did the install and couldn't run Ubuntu at all. After advice from this forum I de-installed and re-installed Ububtu. No problems everything working except I can't get the **&&^^ printer working again!

I have gone through the steps that worked before without success. I am trying to do your purge which I hadn't noticed until now but it says that this requires superuser privilege.

For superuser, Ubuntu uses "sudo". So, for commands that require superuser privilege, just precede them with sudo (IE, sudo apt-get purge package_name)

I need more help - sorry.

I tried to run the purging programs but without success. What directory do I run them in?

I then tried Mark's post number 10; I downloaded the source rpm (whatever that is) but on running the first line I got alien: command not found. I am just going round in circles. It is quite annoying as the printer worked fine until I loaded Kubuntu on top of Ubuntu as recommended.

What command did you use to install KDE? (note on semantics: you just installed a second desktop environment for Ubuntu in addition to Gnome, namely the one used by default in Kubuntu, Pardus, etc - you didn't install Kubuntu as a second OS.)

Alien is a command-line program. You simply need to install it. Use synaptic, or use "sudo apt-get install alien" in the terminal, to install it. Then you should be able to convert the rpm to a deb file, and hopefully get the computer going again. I still think running printconf is a good idea to make sure cups (Common Unix Printing Service) is properly set up. Then getting the driver from either the site I provided or the site robbssi gave should get your printer going again.

Regarding having BOTH kde (kubuntu) and gnome (ubuntu), I personally think it's unnecessary. Some people love the opportunity to have as many different desktop environments with as much eye-candy as possible. I feel it's a waste of space. If it ain't broke, why fix it?

Back to Mark's post #10. I have downloaded alien and run the first line successfully. Trying to run the dpkg (depackage?) gave the following error:

user@ubuntu:~/Downloads$ sudo dpkg -i cnijfilter-common_2.70-3_amd64.deb
dpkg: error processing cnijfilter-common_2.70-3_amd64.deb (--install):
cannot access archive: No such file or directory
Errors were encountered while processing:
cnijfilter-common_2.70-3_amd64.deb

In answer to Robssii I just went to a download site recommended in the article I read and downloaded and ran it.

The file that alien created may have had a different name than "cnijfilter-common_2.70-3_amd64.deb". The command "ls" will list what files are in the directory ("ls *.deb" will specifically list what debian or ubuntu packages are in the directory).

Try the following in the directory where you created the deb file with alien:
and if that doesn't work, then try....

To explain the above, the asterisk is a wildcard character, making the command a little less specific (and thereby less prone to getting the error that you received.)

I had assumed that because the download was a source file (code that had not yet been compiled for any specific computer architecture), that it could be compiled specifically for your amd64 system. However, I'm not a programmer (I'm just a regular user). So, I may have been wrong about this. If so, then just follow the instructions at the site that robbssi gave.

Mark

PS, also, if you don't like using the command line, then there is a gui (graphical user interface) program called "gdebi" that you can run to install any deb files that you may have (if it's not on your system, then use either synaptic or apt-get to install it).

(later edit) In thinking about it, I think the method outlined in post # 9 (robbssi's post) is more likely to work at getting your printer going than what I've written.

mark/John: re post #25:
I hope there is only one file of the format cnijfilter*.deb in the folder, or it could be a real mess!

Given robbssi's cryptic little post, perhaps I should clarify post # 25: The command with the wildcard character is to be used for the one specific file that was created from the process written out in post # 25. The wildcard is useful when you're not sure how the resultant cnijfilter file that is created is going to be numbered. It would be best to create this new cnijfilter file in a directory that did not have other cnijfilter files from past attempts (IE, create it in a new directory would be best).

Some useful terminal/console commands:
ls = list files
cd = change directories
mkdir = make directory
rm = remove file (or delete file)

Again, I think the best solution to getting your printer going is probably the one given by robbssi in post # 9, 13, and 15.