Installing an Epson DX5000 printer in Linux
 

Hi,

I am new to this forum. I live on the South coast of England at 50 degress 47' N 00 degrees 40' W.

Iam 76 years old, and of course retired. I used and loved Unix a lot at work, and installed Red Hat Linux Fedora as a second operating system on my XP PC. I am also interesed in electronics, and am a licenced amateur radio ham.

I have recently bought an Epson DX5000 printer/scanner/photo machine, which works perfectly in XP. I have spent a few weeks trying to get it installed in Linux, without success. It plugs into USB, unlike my previous parallel port printer, which worked under both XP and Linux.

I have read the 'what to send' notes but the log files etc that are produced are enormous! so I'd welcome more detailed guidance on that.

I have 'Fedora core release 3 (Heidelberg) LINUX 2.6.9-1.667'

I think the problem is in CUPS backend, I get no error messages when I 'lpr rls.txt' or try to send a test page. Part of my problem is understanding the terminology used by the various help files.

If someone could tell me what is useful to send I'll do that. If anyone has had the same problem and solved it I'd be grateful for the detailed steps to take.

This looks like a nice friendly forum, thanks for taking me on, I hope I haven't transgressed any protocols.

73, Harry :newbie: (ish)

Welcome to the forum. I did a fast search for linux support for your Epsom 5000DX printer. I did not find it listed as a supported printer.

My general approach is to look here --> http://www.linuxprinting.org/ There is a database of known working printers and what driver to load. There are several others close to yoru model mumber. If this is a new machine, it may not be listed as supported yet. The support for Epsom printers is good.

There are several things to try. Look at the other models that are similar to yours. One of those drivers may do all you nee, at lease get the printer printing. The scanner is another story. Scanners are supported under Sane, not Cups.

You may be lucky and have a response form someone who has got your model working.

Try a googling on the printer model, I like to use www.google.ca/linux Google may have a UK as well, it it does, try that also.

Last choice is to waint a while and see if Linuxprinting posts a driver known to work.

You could also try Epsoms support pages, just in case they have a linux driver.

Hope this helps.

Welcome to LQ! Here's the Epson printer ratings from LinuxPrinting.org that camorri mentioned. I will second that suggestion - that site is the best one-stop-shop for all things related to printing under Linux, and contains some very helpful tutorials

I guess one question I'd have is whether or not other USB devices (such as a pendrive) are recognized when they are plugged in. In other words, if the printer uses a USB connection, then the first order of business is to get USB support up and running, if it's not already. Good luck with it either way

Thanks for the replies, Camorri and JW. Sorry for the long time coming back.

I tried all sorts, but got no result, Linux just would not connect to my USB printer -- until yesterday: I installed Linux 7 from the DVD in the book 'Beginning Fedora' from Apress. At last I could print *something* but there was no driver for this model (Epson DX5000), I tried a DX3800 driver but the colour register is all wrong. Epson's site pointed me to 'pipslite-cups...' driver, which I've downloaded and tried to install. It fails because it has the dependencies:
libgdk-1.2.so.0
libglib ... (... are 'ditto')
libgmodule ...
libgtk ...

Are these on my system already? if so where? or can I download them, again where from? A google search for them gives a bewildering list of something likes!

I have only a dial-up modem, and can't (yet?) use it from Linux, I have to admit to using XP for Internet access, Sorry.

I'm sure this is a newbie question, and *everyone* knows the answer!

Thanks for the opportunity to ask this.

Harry

HAve you decided to stick with Fedora for the for seen future? Since it at least could do something with your printer that may be a good place to be for now.

To see if you have USB support loaded, open a konsole and run the command
'/sbin/lsmod | grep usb' ( without the quotes. YOu should see something like this, if USB support is installed.

Have you got Cups installed? Fedora used a package manager system, so if it is not installed, install that. If it is installed, on to the next.

Could you post back more details on the driver from Epsom? It sounds like it may be source code, meaning you have to compile the binary file in order to load the kernel with the support. If that is the case, then you probably do not have the development packages installed in order to compile anything. If that is the case, we'll need to see if we can figure out what to install. The package names may be different from distro to distro. I don't run Fedora, so we'll need to dig up some information on just what to install. The package manager will help look after the bewildering list of dependencies.

The other thing you can try is bring up the package manager ( Synaptic ??? not sure which one it is since I don't run Fedora ) and see if you can find a package of Epsom drivers and install that. You may find the driver (binary file) all ready compiled.

If that printer is new to the market, there may not be a linux driver. If the hardware is popular, then one will likely show up before long.

Hope this helps.

Use the driver for the DX4800
 

I am printing with CUPS and the driver for the DX4800. Use mtink to monitor ink cartridges. If the printer stops working, then it is because one of the cartridges is empty.

If sane says it has not found the scanner, the problem is that your user must be added to the scanner group. Afterwards it works well.

Here is a link for a Epsom backend that is supposed to work.

http://khk.net/sane/index.html

Near the bottom of the page you will find the info...

I don't have one of these, and I'm by no means an expert on scanners.