A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.

Installing Dell 1320c Color Laser Printer on Ubuntu

Tue Nov 10 21:05:25 2009

Instructions on how to get Dell 1320c color laser printer to work in Ubuntu

This article describes how I got Dell 1320c color laser printer to work in my Ubuntu. At the time of this writing, Dell is not planning to write driver for this printer, as per tech support. If you know a better way, just drop me a line.

The Story

Dell 1320c Printer

Two years ago I blasted a load of cash on some Dell crapolio hardware that included a laptop, some bling-bling and a Dell 1320c Color Laser printer that I got with a discount. I was dumb enough to not check whether it worked in Ubuntu.... and it didn't.

I had quite a few unsuccessfull tries of getting it to work until I officially gave up. Considering that I print once in a blue moon, my solution was a separate Win2k box on the network to which I'd copy the files I needed to print and printed off of it. Like a true bachelor, I am short on furniture and the printer resided on top of the box it came in... right near the wall of computers that I rarely used:

Zoffix Znet's old computer wall setup

When I built my new 8GB RAM, Quad Core AMD Phenom boxen (effectively rendering my lappy useless), the "computer wall" started to get on my nerves and I threw away boxes I didn't use anymore. I was left with my new box, a lappy, and an ugly-looking Win2k box for my printing. I really wanted to get rid of it, so (being slightly drunk) decided to call Dell and give them shit. After being transfered to the THIRD person and sitting on hold for about 20 minutes I finally got my answer: "I am trully sorry but we do not have the driver". After telling them off that they sell Ubuntu boxes yet do not provide any drivers I got about 50 more apologies until I hung up and went off to Google in hopes that some genius came up with something for my printer... and a miracle happened!

Let's Roll

I ran into a forum thread that claimed that my precious printer will work with Fuji Xerox Docuprint C525 driver. Fuji's site only offered a 32-bit RPM, which you can download and convert into .deb yourself if you really want to.

Unfortunately, I had an amd64 system and alien command refused to convert it into a DEB package. I asked someone online to do that for me. Result: a 32-bit DEB package for the Fuji driver.

  • Download the Fuji's 32-bit RPM file and convert it yourself or use my 32-bit DEB that is already converted
  • Install it: sudo dpkg -i --force-architecture fuji-xerox-docuprint-c525-a-ap_1.0-2_i386.deb (the --force-architecture bit is not needed if you're running 32-bit system)
  • Go to System->Administration->Printing (or whatever it is if you're using KDE) and add your 1320c printer. You may have the Fuji driver in the list, but I did not have it. What I did is chose "Provide PPD file" and pointed it to /usr/share/cups/model/FujiXerox/en/FX_DocuPrint_C525_A_AP.ppd.
  • Now, feel free to tweak the settings to whatever you want (and what works). By default my printer was crying for different paper. This is what I have set (other options were left at default):

Printer now works quite good, I'd even say better than in Windows (and my cat is trying to hump it as I write this article)

Comments

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  • thor

    Mon Apr 30 11:44:36 2012

    Thanks! Works exactly as described above on Ubuntu 12.04.

  • Zoffix Znet

    Sat Mar 31 19:58:51 2012

    Confirming this fix worked on Ubuntu 12.04. The only thing different, is that I had to use web interface for CUPS (http://localhost:631) and play around with what trays are available.

  • Zoffix Znet

    Sat Mar 31 19:42:25 2012

    On Ubuntu 12.04, the deb code I wrote doesn't want to install that fuji package, but it installs fine with the Ubuntu Software Centre.

  • Enow B. Mbi

    Thu Mar 29 11:04:42 2012

    Thanks for the article.it works just fine.I'm beginning to enjoy ubuntu.I'm just about a month into it.

  • DJ

    Sun Feb 5 14:49:44 2012

    For Fedora fans, the same things happens in Fedora 16 - although I had no problems with Fedora 14. Anyway the answer was simply to do yum install cups-libs.i686.

    Now, I have found this driver very unreliable with my Dell. It frequently doesn't print multi-page jobs and often reprints one or more pages. Does anyone else see this behaviour using this driver & printer combination?

  • Wm G

    Wed Dec 7 13:29:32 2011

    I'm a man who dared to waste one hour of time to discover the value of using other folk's kind efforts - thanks for the already-converted DEB. I learnt a bit about Ubuntu, too... :)

  • leToff

    Mon Nov 7 08:13:42 2011

    If like me you have problems with this solution, keep on reading what I did:

    After following previous solution cups reported errors. Here is an extract of /var/log/cups/error.log:

    D [07/Nov/2011:13:29:07 +0100] [Job 18] Started filter /usr/lib/cups/filter/bannertops (PID 7325)
    D [07/Nov/2011:13:29:07 +0100] [Job 18] Started filter /usr/lib/cups/filter/pstops (PID 7326)
    D [07/Nov/2011:13:29:07 +0100] [Job 18] Started filter /usr/lib/cups/filter/FXM_PF (PID 7327)
    D [07/Nov/2011:13:29:07 +0100] [Job 18] Started backend /usr/lib/cups/backend/lpd (PID 7328)
    D [07/Nov/2011:13:29:07 +0100] [Job 18] DELL-1320c: error while loading shared libraries: libcups.so.2: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64

    So what I did was to have a look at that filter:

    ldd /usr/lib/cups/filter/FXM_PF
    linux-gate.so.1 => (0xf7752000)
    libcups.so.2 => not found
    libc.so.6 => /lib32/libc.so.6 (0xf75f5000)
    /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xf7753000)

    So basically the filter could not find libcups.so.2 even if it was present on my system. After some search I found out that I had to install a compatibility lib :

    apt-get install ia32-libs

    And now the same previous ldd gives a completely different output:

    ldd /usr/lib/cups/filter/FXM_PF

    linux-gate.so.1 => (0xf7713000)
    libcups.so.2 => /usr/lib32/libcups.so.2 (0xf76af000)
    libc.so.6 => /lib32/libc.so.6 (0xf7568000)
    libgssapi_krb5.so.2 => /usr/lib32/libgssapi_krb5.so.2 (0xf7538000)
    libkrb5.so.3 => /usr/lib32/libkrb5.so.3 (0xf7486000)
    libk5crypto.so.3 => /usr/lib32/libk5crypto.so.3 (0xf7463000)
    libcom_err.so.2 => /lib32/libcom_err.so.2 (0xf7460000)
    libgnutls.so.26 => /usr/lib32/libgnutls.so.26 (0xf73c8000)
    libgcrypt.so.11 => /usr/lib32/libgcrypt.so.11 (0xf7353000)
    libavahi-common.so.3 => /usr/lib32/libavahi-common.so.3 (0xf7347000)
    libavahi-client.so.3 => /usr/lib32/libavahi-client.so.3 (0xf7337000)
    libpthread.so.0 => /lib32/libpthread.so.0 (0xf731e000)
    libz.so.1 => /usr/lib32/libz.so.1 (0xf730a000)
    /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xf7714000)
    libkrb5support.so.0 => /usr/lib32/libkrb5support.so.0 (0xf7302000)
    libdl.so.2 => /lib32/libdl.so.2 (0xf72fe000)
    libkeyutils.so.1 => /lib32/libkeyutils.so.1 (0xf72fb000)
    libresolv.so.2 => /lib32/libresolv.so.2 (0xf72e7000)
    libtasn1.so.3 => /usr/lib32/libtasn1.so.3 (0xf72d7000)
    libgpg-error.so.0 => /usr/lib32/libgpg-error.so.0 (0xf72d2000)
    libdbus-1.so.3 => /lib32/libdbus-1.so.3 (0xf7298000)
    librt.so.1 => /lib32/librt.so.1 (0xf728f000)

    Guess what, that completely solved the problems. ;)

    Hope this helps.
    leToff

  • Toff

    Mon Nov 7 07:37:11 2011

    Unfortunately this doesn't work on my Debian amd64. I've the following error on cups webpage:

    "/usr/lib/cups/filter/FXM_PF failed"

    Any idea ?
    Thanks dude.

  • pop

    Sun Oct 16 10:28:04 2011

    Thank you so much. It works very well on 64bit Ubuntu 11.10. The new printer driver will be in the driver list, but not under the vendor "Xerox" but under "FX".

  • riccio

    Sat Oct 15 05:15:52 2011

    That's the way i like it, searching a solution, finding with few mouse clicks.
    Thank you, it works pretty with ubuntu 11.10 in German.

  • DX

    Thu Oct 6 12:24:52 2011

    Worked first time for me, may thanks

  • Thanks

    Wed Sep 28 12:24:11 2011

    Worked like a dream using Ubuntu 11.04 natty. Many thanks.

  • DK

    Thu Sep 1 15:01:33 2011

    Thanks...worked correctly. Only issue I had was that the output tray defaulted to Bypass even though I configured it with the 250-sheet tray. Went into printer config a second time and set to Auto and it's fine. Good post.

  • Zoffix Znet

    Wed Aug 24 11:30:16 2011

    Hey, you don't have to be a programmer! Not exactly sure what it is you're asking for, but if it's the 64-bit converted file, then read the text; the link is there.

  • jack

    Wed Aug 24 09:39:50 2011

    The answer to my prayers
    I have a brand new Ubuntu set up and a ---- Dell1320c-
    But I am a total newby and am no coder.
    So - please what is the chance of getting hold of the linux converted item simply to install?
    Here is hoping.
    J

  • Denys

    Fri Aug 12 15:32:33 2011

    You are a genius
    I started ubuntu on a new machine two weeks ago and have struggled with a few things.
    Your directions worked a dream and even installed the drivers.
    I used the ppd settings , alered the printer settings and there she goes.

    Many thanks

  • Marcel Loose

    Sat Jul 9 07:55:45 2011

    Hi,

    To Steve H. who had problems installing the driver on 64-bit natty.

    Instead of converting the rpm to a deb package, use 'alien' to convert the rpm to a tgz file instead (alien -t). Then simply untar the tar-ball as root in / and off you go.

    Hope this helps.

    Regards,
    Marcel Loose.

  • Zoffix Znet

    Wed May 25 03:38:20 2011

    Hm, steve h, looks like it's saying you need to install libc6 and libcups2. Have you tried installing them? (sudo apt-get install libc6 libcups2) Other than that, I have no idea.

  • steve h

    Tue May 24 22:46:55 2011

    I had done this pre-natty but after installing natty on a 64bit machine and trying to install with --force-architectureI get
    fuji-xerox-docuprint-c525-a-ap:i386 depends on libc6 (>= 2.3).
    fuji-xerox-docuprint-c525-a-ap:i386 depends on libcups2 (>= 1.3.8).
    libc6 is at 2.13-0ubuntu13 and libcups2 is at 1.4.6-5ubuntu1
    and the install fails.
    Any help would be appreciated.

  • dan m

    Thu May 5 10:28:54 2011

    can anyone host the 64 bit deb file as I dont have a 32 bit system to convert it on and the referenced converted version isnt working for me.

  • pasu

    Sun Apr 17 22:45:55 2011

    Thanks, it works in LMDE 64bit :

  • Ben

    Thu Mar 31 10:58:33 2011

    Nice, network printing with ubuntu 10.10 and dell working just fine, also in Germany. thx!!!

  • dan

    Mon Mar 21 19:39:28 2011

    Fantastic!
    Working fine on Ubuntu 10.10, only needed to change the 'optional tray module' setting to get it to play nicely. As a linux newbie I was finding printer installation all very confusing until I found your clear and simple instructions :)

  • Paulo Domingues

    Sat Mar 12 09:24:25 2011

    Fantastic! It's work. Thank you very much.

  • David

    Fri Mar 4 04:26:59 2011

    Many thanks, worked a charm.

  • Michael G

    Mon Feb 28 12:23:55 2011

    You are the best!!! I followed your instructions and got a networked 1320c to print on Ubuntu 10.10! This is the last piece of the puzzle...I can now switch my business to run on Ubuntu!!! Thank you, very, very much.

  • bobschi

    Tue Feb 22 10:29:30 2011

    I had to install "ia32-libs" to get it working on my 64 bit machine.

    I use Debian 6 (Squeeze).

    Thx for this great article!

  • Mark

    Wed Feb 2 05:58:16 2011

    Brilliant, it all works

  • Aztech

    Sat Jan 15 14:50:53 2011

    Thanks a lot!
    I've lost 10 minutes trying to understand why I hear some noise, but it doesn't start to print! The problem was in wrong paper tray)))))

  • Darrin

    Wed Dec 8 04:46:32 2010

    Thanks for the post!! Works great

  • Hairy Potter

    Fri Dec 3 08:32:43 2010

    You ripper

    Worked on Linux Mint 9

    Now I dont need to buy more coffee

  • dave J

    Fri Dec 3 08:07:19 2010

    you sir, are a gent & a scholar :)

  • Wayne Rodrigues

    Sat Nov 20 00:30:01 2010

    Thanks a lot! It works perfectly in Ubuntu 10.10 64bit via USB. I used the deb. I haven't been able to set up the networked one though... how do u do that?

  • mark

    Wed Nov 17 10:47:00 2010

    thanks, worked perfectly on 10.10 64bit :)

  • Kiwi Mark

    Mon Oct 4 10:17:57 2010

    Mate you are a legend!!!!

    printer working fine in 10.04 =-D

  • Alex

    Mon Sep 27 16:29:19 2010

    Thanks for the .deb file; I knew how to install this printer, but couldn't convert the RPM package with Alien this time ..

  • dwillmot20

    Tue Sep 21 16:26:31 2010

    Just realized tha I hadn't set up the correct printer tray, oops, I am a numpty!

  • dwillmot20

    Tue Sep 21 15:50:13 2010

    Thanks for this, its been great except I have one further problem. When I send a test print, the printer returns a "printer out of paper" error Even though it has plenty of paper. Any suggestions gratefully received.

  • jon288

    Wed Aug 4 05:16:51 2010

    Thanks Mr Awesome!
    The name says it all! 10.04 and a Dell printer. All working.

  • MAD-Max

    Fri Jul 23 09:07:06 2010

    Thank you very much.

    Very usefull for me :)

  • Lou Cioccio

    Sat Jul 10 08:19:00 2010

    Update: Put it on the network and it found it at 192.168.1.100 (maybe 101) anyway it worked. Two of the other boxes run XP and the pastor has the Ubuntu and I copied bliss for the desktop to make him feel comfortable. Again thank you for doing this. On a side not I got rid of this box that I made EP45T that I had trouble getting MacOS on it; all kinds of kernel panics. I have two that work fine. So I will get another EP45UD3R that is identical.
    Ciao,
    Lou Cioccio

  • Lou Cioccio

    Thu Jul 8 16:21:28 2010

    Thanks I was able to do it both USB and on the network; but had trouble with the Linksys usb print server. I just received the network adaptor for the printer and will try that later today.
    Your instructions were very clear. I am installing this computer in our previous pastor church as a replacement but instead of WinXP I put Ubuntu on it. His particular church does not use a dedicated windows software (PDS) for census and giving they just a spread sheet.
    Again thank you.

  • Florian

    Thu May 27 15:22:34 2010

    I was able to increase the input file size by folling http://p-s.co.nz/wordpress/?p=227 or using socket and setting Port9100 timeout to a higher value (in the printer's print server web setup console).
    The problem remains: The filter queue is slow and eats CPU time. Time to get a turbo boost enabled multi core CPU ;-). Has anyone found out what is the GPL'ed part of the driver and how to obtain the sources?

  • bobg

    Thu May 27 12:50:29 2010

    This worked great with 64 Bit Ubuntu 10.04. My selection screens are not exactly like yours and I had to change the default paper source. When I printed the test page, it worked very well and the color is great. I had almost given up on Linux but now I may be a believer. Thanks for your work and information.

  • Florian

    Thu May 27 04:06:00 2010

    Thanks for this post. Works basically for me with Ubuntu 9.10 AMD64 and 10.4 i386.

    There is one issue: When printing colored bitmaps (photos etc.) with resolutions equal or higher than approx. 1100x1467 the processes 'FXM_PF' and 'socket' eat 100% CPU and... nothing else 'happens'. cups' error_log contains a 'Set job-printer-state-message to "Unable to write print data: Broken pipe", current level=ERROR'.
    When scaling the input image down to 1024x1366 everything is fine. Output size does not matter.

    A gray image is printed until size exceeds approx. 1600x2134.

    Has anyone had issues like this?

  • kalisto07

    Wed May 19 07:41:54 2010

    thx its works ! but i have to use this URl : usb://Dell/Color%20Laser%201320c
    i'm on mint isadora 64x
    u can use FX DocuPrint C525 A-AP is u dont have PPD file

  • georg

    Mon May 3 03:58:30 2010

    Thanks a lot for your guide! Worked instantly perfect, only thing that had manually to be changed was the paper source that in my case was set at bypass by default.

    Really good work!

  • max.meier36

    Tue Apr 13 16:05:21 2010

    Great stuff, it worked at once on my ubuntu 9.10/64. To my knowledge, there are no drivers for the Dell 1320c provided by Dell nor the Ubuntu community. Previous tries to select another printer from the build-in lists (Xerox, Dell) failed. Thanks very much !

  • Zoffix Znet

    Sun Feb 21 08:44:07 2010

    I have nothing to suggest. I have the most recently updated Ubuntu 9.10, and printer works just fine. Perhaps you're missing some CUPS packages?

  • Mungo

    Sun Feb 21 00:07:54 2010

    I have this same problem with lsusb not seeing the Dell 1320c. Found this bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/519690 which suggests problem might be due to malformed output from /usr/lib/cups/backend/usb. Tried renaming /usr/lib/cups/backend/usb to usb.orig and replacing it with a one liner that cleaned up the bad syntax:
    #!/bin/sh
    /usr/lib/cups/backend/usb.orig | perl -0777 -pe 's/;STS:AAA[^"]*DA==//'

    Now seem to get sensible output from sudo /usr/lib/cups/backend/usb
    but clicking "New" in printer configuration still does not detect my USB-connected Dell 1320c printer.
    Not sure what to do next. Hints?

  • Richard

    Fri Feb 19 17:21:19 2010

    I have the same problem as Jeremy above, and get the same error. lsusb does not see the Dell, but when I do sudo lsusb it sees it. Maybe you can help us or point us in the right direction. Thanks

  • Martin

    Sun Jan 24 20:31:15 2010

    To install on Ubuntu 9.10:
    - Download the above mentioned .deb file for the Fuji Xerox printer.
    - Install the deb file.
    - Install new printer and choose FX and later provide the path to the file /usr/share/cups/model/FujiXerox/en/FX_DocuPrint_C525_A_AP.ppd
    - Choose the above shown configurations.

  • Zoffix Znet

    Sun Dec 20 12:03:44 2009

    Yey \o/

  • Tim

    Sun Dec 20 11:45:53 2009

    You are some kind of wizard... it must be magic... a printer that works first time... in Linux... with cups !

    You are now officially my hero !

  • Christian

    Tue Dec 15 05:06:05 2009

    Dude thanks for this excellent tutorial. Just made my day, IT-wise that is.

  • Nick

    Tue Dec 8 17:56:20 2009

    Just wanted to say thanks for taking the time to post this up. I was having the same issue printing from an Ubuntu machine to a shared Windows Dell 1320c and this sorted it right out for me with minimum hassle.

  • Zoffix Znet

    Sat Nov 21 09:23:24 2009

    I really have no idea, I hook up my printer via USB, so there's no URL that I enter...

  • Jeremy

    Fri Nov 20 23:39:09 2009

    Hey man, I have had the same issue forever now and it is absolutely driving me nuts to copy whatever I want printed over to my windows partition, reboot into windows, then finally print. Thats a great tutorial, but I have an issue and thought maybe you could point me in the right direction..
    (btw I am using an Intel I7 920 with amd64 ubuntu 9.10 gnome)
    I had the same issue with ubuntu 9.04, when I try to add the printer under admin, printing, new printer it doesn't see any printers at all, just like you said. But when I try to point to the .ppd file, I click on other and my only option is to "enter device url", there I put localhost:, then navigate to my .ppd file under /usr/share/cups/blah/blah". I then set the mem cap to 64mb, and tray to 250 sheets. I keep printer description as default, but when I click next it gives me a CUPS server error, "There was an error during the CUPS installation: "client-error-not-possible".
    I really appreciate any feedback you might be able to give. I never ask for help online, and in fact this is the 1st time I have ever. This printer is really driving me nuts though. Thanks again!
    Jeremy

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