Comment 7 for bug 898986

I had a Samsung CLP-610ND acquired at the end of 2008/early 2009 and had configured back then I think by following openprinting.org. I last used this printer in August this year with natty when it worked fine. In October I upgraded to Oneiric and for other reasons had to do a clean install which lost my printer configuration. Yesterday I needed to print something important so I added the printer letting the wizards choose and ended up in a hell that resulted in this bug report. I am still unable to tell if the issue is entirely the Linux printer drivers, or if the printer has also developed an internal fault. There are so many combinations of USB vs network, various drivers, colour versus monochrome, Windows drivers (PCL is what they default to, Samsung has their own which crashed several times). So either I was having bad luck with all the software for a discontinued printer, or the printer itself would get wedged contributing to the issues. I have attached my /etc/cups directory from a backup of when I last used the printer without issue.

Today I replaced the printer with its successor model the Samsung CLP-620ND and the rest of this refers to that printer. It speaks the same printer languages (PCL5/6, SPL) and has the same features and functionality as my 610ND did.

I made a virtual machine with a vanilla desktop install of 64 bit oneiric to ensure a clean starting point.

I searched for "print" and used whatever program appeared (system-config-printer?) to add the printer as a network printer. It was autodetected with connection options of IPP, Appsocket/Jetdirect and LPD. I left it as IPP which was selected due to being first in the list. It offered to print a test page as the final part of the printer wizard. A black and white page came out as well as a desktop notification that there was a paper jam (false). Back in the config window it showed that foo2qpdl for CLP-620 was in use. Under printer options I changed it from monochrome to color and asked for another test page. The printer made whirring sounds but no paper ever came out.

The ink/toner tab showed cartridges and what is probably their serial numbers as well as transfer belt, fuser, MP roller and tray 1 roller but does not show the levels. The printer icon in the printing tool always had a red no-entry overlay on it probably due to the nonsense paper jam claim.

I changed the driver to the CLP-610ND one labelled "2.0.0 [en]" which is splix and opted for a new PPD rather than keeping old settings. I got another (wrong) paper jam notification amd a page printed saying "SPL-C ERROR - Please use the proper driver". If I looked at completed jobs in CUPS web interface it said: "completed at Sat 03 Dec 2011 04:56:30 AM PST "SpliX Cannot open CMS file /usr/share/cups/profiles/samsung/CLP-610cms (2)"

From the splix site you can see that installing the CMS files is needed and there was a web page somewhere that linked the SPL-C error to a lack of CMS files. I didn't bother installing them this time as the splix home page shows the CLP-600 and 610 as untested (no mention of 620).

I then used the graphical tool to change the driver to Generic > PCL 6/PCL XL > Generic PCL 6/PCL XML Printer Foomatic/pxlcolor [en] (recommended), which was the first in the list. Again I opted for a new PPD rather than copying settings. I asked for a test page and got one (along with another erroneous paper jam warning). The page was monochrome which corresponded to the default printer options (and I had selected pxlcolor not pxlmono).

I changed to Normal print quality (from Normal Grayscale) and did another test page. I also turned duplex on. That got me a colour test page. I then used the Resume template in LibreOffice and drag and dropped in some wallpapers to get a two page document with text and pictures and told it to print in Normal color duplex. LibreOffice defaulted to A4 paper even though my options were for US Letter. The printout looked good. (And more paper jam notifications.)

I then printed again, but this time with every option maxed out (highest quality, highest resolution 1200x1200 dpi). The images were terrible - they lost their vibrancy and colour had been dithered. 1200x600 dpi had the same problem as did 600x600 dpi. The only
resolution setting that didn't result in such poor images was "Controlled by 'Print Quality'". (And more paper jam notifications.)

Samsung claim in their specs "Resolution Up to 9600 x 600 dpi Effective Output" which smells of marketing embellishment.

I then installed the openprinting splix package from the URL you directed (2.0.0 deb for lsb 3.2). The openprinting splix driver showed up under the CLP-610 entry. I used a new ppd again and hit print test page. The state changed to "Idle - SpliX Error while rendering the request. Check the previous message". In CUPS the job showed up as "completed at Sat 03 Dec 2011 05:41:47 AM PST "SpliX Cannot execute pstoraster (2)"". I tried to print the document from LibreOffice and nothing came out. CUPS showed this for the state: completed at Sat 03 Dec 2011 05:44:35 AM PST "SpliX Cannot open CMS file /opt/OpenPrinting-SpliX/ppds/samsung/cms/CLP-610cms (2)"

If you download a Samsung Unified Driver from their website you get a directory within named cdroot/Linux/noarch/at_opt/share/ppd/cms/ whose contents I copied across. I then got the same "Cannot execute pstoraster" error message as with the test page.

So basically neither foo2qpdl nor splix will work although this is unsurprising given their home pages aren't particularly optimistic. The PCL 6 driver does work but if you change the resolution setting you get extremely crappy images.

I tried the Samsung unified driver again. They have different version numbers listed on the web pages for different printers, and then the download file has yet another version number. The most recent driver I found was from September (the one on the page for the CLP-620ND is from January). The installer is scary - at the end there are a whole bunch of error messages where it fails to create /proc/Desktop and similar directories! The installer also kills your X session.

After switching drivers, the Print Test Page button was grayed out. Trying to print my test 2 page document resulted in the page rendered width being halved so everything was smooshed into the left half of the sheet. And then several more sheets came out after the content entirely blank before I cancelled it on the printer. My suspicions are that Samsung targets far old versions of Linux, and they don't do a very good job (eg not using DEB/RPM packages) so uninstalling is painful.