Hi, I am new to Linux and have just installed Fedora 6. I have several issues I need help with and am just about to search for where to ask about problems retrieving Fedora update information (“Cannot find a valid baseurl for repo: core”), and trying to work out which driver my Canon PIXMA iP4200 printer has (“Specify Printer Driver. You have just plugged in a 'Canon iP4200' printer. The proper driver for the printer was not detected. Please select a driver”) in order to get my rpinter to work in the Linux environment.

I'll be 58 years old next month, I live in Brisbane, Australia. I can write in English, German, Japanese, Esperanto, Ido, Mondlango, Lingua Franca Nova, and Sintezo.

Ray

Welcome!

Welcome to LQ!

For your primter drivers, check Canon and search for your drivers for your printer. They're downloadable.

Thanks for the welcome, Mara and cybergal.

Mara, I was able to find the Canon driver for this printer and was able to download it into my Desktop. However I have not yet found a way to install the driver.

I am sending the following message to some forums for help:

'How to install a driver that I downloaded to the desktop' Ray Bergmann Sunday 24 Dec 2006

I downloaded onto the Fedora desktop iP4200_Linux_260.tar.gz (10599.29 Kb), which is the binary, source files and operation guide guideip4200-2.60-1.tar.gz (702.18 Kb) for the Canon BJ Linux Print Filter, Version 2.60 (Released on 26-05-2006).

However I cannot understand how to install the driver even after searching through the operation guide and http://linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/210/1/ and http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Printing-HOWTO/

Can anyone help?

Ray Bergmann

Welcome Ray, I have had a 1 month long fight with those "bloody" Canon things for a bloke in the mallee country is Sth Aussie.
Only one thing to say, TRADE IT FOR AN H.P.

There is a file called install or readme inside the tgz file that explains the compile and install routine. the drivers for Canon you downloaded are in source code form, and must be compiled into a program, more likely to be a "bash script", a bit like an old DOS batch file, then installed from a text based terminal. Remember the old days of DOS, and text based everything?

On H.P., once was a time that Linux and H.P. did not get on. Then most distro's got so H.P. friendly, they installed H.P. Inkjet drivers even when I had no printer on the machine. I bought an H.P.deskjet 3325 for the Linux server, and a 1300 series print,scan copier, for the rest of the network. Never a hassle with anything so far, over 2 years and counting.

Regards shorty943.

Thanks Mara and Shorty934 for the advice. I have actually solved the problem and my printer now works great.

After I had clicked several times on the iP4200_Linux_260.tar.gz package I had downloaded from http://www.canon-europe.com/Support/software/linux/ the driver must have installed itself automatically somehow to the right place, because when I turned the Canon PIXMA iP4200 printer off and then on again, a window came up saying that I had plugged in a Canon iP4200 printer and asked me to select a PrinterConfiguration amongst a group which now included Device URl: usb://canon/iP4200 and Make & Model: Canon iP4200 Ver. 2.6 (which had not been in the list of Models given before this). Navigating to System > Admin > Printing > Printer Configuration, "Device URl: usb://canon/iP4200" and "Make & Model: Canon iP4200 Ver. 2.6" now appeared on the Printer Configuration window, and when I clicked on "Make Default Printer" then "Default Printer is Canon-PIXMA-iP4200" came up and when I clicked on "Print Test Page" it printed out beautifully.

Ray

Happy to hear all is well, Ray. You got the good one. The one I am fighting is, cranky or, bah, more egg nog!

Merry Christmas.
Shorty.

For Debian, I've found a very simple solution, which actually works on first try (I don't know about Ubuntu etc., though).
It's here:
http://mambo.kuhp.kyoto-u.ac.jp/~takushi/#canon
Please note that I had some problems uninstalling the previous version of the driver package, which caused some problems reinstalling the standard driver. I don't know about this one.
Thanks so much for providing this Mr Takushi Miyoshi!