system-config-printer

This page is about the printer administration tool system-config-printer, which first appeared in Fedora (as part of my work at Red Hat), and later Ubuntu and other operating systems.

The purpose of the tool is to configure a CUPS server (often the local machine) using the CUPS API. The tool is written in Python, using pygtk for the graphical parts and with some Python bindings (pycups) for the CUPS API.

It is largely the same as using the CUPS web interface for configuring printers, but has the advantage of being a native application rather than a web page. It appears in the Fedora menu under System ▸ Administration ▸ Printing.

As a result of using the CUPS API the tool is able to configure remote CUPS instances and is not limited to configuring CUPS on the local machine. The CUPS library providing the API uses HTTP and IPP to communicate with the CUPS server.

Please note that I no longer maintain system-config-printer. Please visit its new home at GitHub.

Download

Download older tarball releases from:
http://cyberelk.net/tim/data/system-config-printer/

You will also require pycups from:
http://cyberelk.net/tim/software/pycups/

Source Code

The git repository is available at GitHub.

Translations

Language translations should be submitted through Zanata.

Reporting bugs

If you have found a bug in system-config-printer, please report it. If system-config-printer came with your operating system, report the bug to the operating system vendor:

  • Packagers, or people who have installed system-config-printer from source themselves, should report the bug at GitHub.  This is the “upstream” bug tracker.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora users should use Red Hat Bugzilla
  • Ubuntu users should use launchpad
  • Mandriva users should use Mandriva Bugzilla

Comments

363 responses to “system-config-printer”

  1. tim avatar
    tim

    Montse: what you are seeing is not a system-config-printer bug. Please take a look at this page to find out how to diagnose or report printing problems. Sounds like you need to report a problem using the Ubuntu launchpad web site.

    Reply
  2. Mark Luxton avatar
    Mark Luxton

    I am wondering about the Property settings under Printer Options called “Color Model”. The setting was automatically set as RGB. I have ink in my printer from left to right, Black,Cyan,Magenta,Yellow.
    Below the Color Model setting is “Printer Features Common” where “Ink Type” is set as CMYK.
    Please excuse my ignorance, but, should one or both of these settings be KCMY; the same layout as the actual ink cartridges?
    FYI The test page printed out fine with the default settings.

    Great job BTW on this tool. I was quite impressed to see the latest UBUNTU LTS beta 1 automatically detect my Canon printer and go get the proper driver. Most times Windoze can’t do that.

    Reply
  3. tim avatar
    tim

    Mark: I think the colour model determines how the printer driver receives raster data, whereas the ink type determines the way the driver specifies to the printer which colours to use.

    I think the order of the colours in CMYK depends on how the printer expects to receive the data over the wire rather than the physical order they are in the printer (although one might expect them to correspond). Not completely sure.

    Reply
  4. PRINT HEAD » Firewall adjustments

    […] just released version 1.2.1 of system-config-printer.  One of the changes is that it now uses the D-Bus API of the Fedora firewall tool to actually […]

    Reply
  5. PRINT HEAD » system-config-printer now has a mailing list

    […] those of you interested in participating in system-config-printer development, I invite you to join the new mailing […]

    Reply
  6. Slackware64 -current: CUPS 1.4.3 and general printing related issues

    […] gutenprint does not report inklevels to cups (see email-correspondence with Jan-Pawel Wrozszinski, http://cyberelk.net/tim/software/sys…ge-7/#comments). Tim opened a bug on Red Hat Bugzila for this (see mailings cited above). For Epson printers, you […]

    Reply
  7. M.Csaba avatar
    M.Csaba

    Why on earth the need to throw away something that worked well (HAL)?
    In Mandriva 2010.1 RC I cannot use properly my printer SAMSUNG ML-1640:
    After few pages it gets jammed. I suspect that it is work of the great deed moving HAL to udev.
    Beside that, the udev is crippled in Ubuntu Lucid too. I’ve been hoping that at least Mandriva won’t follow that bad example, but as a Hungarian phrase says: ” One monkey makes a hundred!”

    Reply
  8. tim avatar
    tim

    The HAL solution did not work particularly well actually.

    Does your printer require firmware to be downloaded every time it is powered on? I know there is an outstanding issue with that.

    Reply
  9. LAURIE avatar
    LAURIE

    Why all of a sudden I no longer able to print only print to file. It says something about CUPS but when I following the instructions, it does not have the same items , such as properties, or expand network, it also say go to services after clicking printing, but that word never shows up. how do i get my printer to print whats on the screen?

    Reply
  10. jwtear avatar
    jwtear

    hello , how i can get driver to my printer ? its not exist in my version ubunu , its LBP2900B .

    thanks

    Reply
  11. jason avatar
    jason

    Great job on this tool. quite impressed to see the latest UBUNTU LTS beta 1 automatically detect my Canon printer and go get the proper driver.

    Reply
  12. tim avatar
    tim

    LAURIE: I’m afraid I don’t have enough information about your problem to help you. Please talk to the vendor you obtained your Linux distribution from — hopefully they will be able to help out.

    jwtear: I think you need to ask in one of the Ubuntu forums about that. This page is about the configuration tool, not about specific drivers.

    Reply
  13. Baby avatar
    Baby

    I have a printer cannon MF4320d. I could configure it in linux /fedora13 . But the printer evnthough originally support printing and scanning , is not supporting the scanning part in linux. Can anybody help me?

    Reply
  14. tim avatar
    tim

    Do you have the libsane-hpaio package installed?

    Reply
  15. Pierre avatar
    Pierre

    I’d like to know what the test page should normally look like.

    My printer is a Canon i70 (lsusb says “Bus 002 Device 009: ID 04a9:1076 Canon, Inc. i70” about it) and I could not find any driver for that printer model!

    So I tried the i80 driver and I’ve printed a test page which I could print. But I just can see a logo on this test page, and a lot of wired looking like lines below…

    How could I know what the test page should have looked look like, on my Ubuntu 10.4? Is it recorded somewhere?

    I’d like to know if I’ve simply tried to print that page or no…
    Thanks to tell me, it would help!

    Reply
  16. Harry avatar
    Harry

    Beginner here. Loaded down lp0 drv for 2010 Mandriva Gnome directly from Brother. It came complete with rpm installation. Driver installed the printer and addresses it – but then does not print the document. Trouble shooter reveals a data base clogged with the wrong models; then stops right there. Log talks about “dirty files”, but that seems to relate to earlier efforts. Seems the driver did not add the printer to the data base. Can someone help with a few commands or other method? gratefully – – –

    Reply
  17. tim avatar
    tim

    Harry: Your best bet is to talk to Mandriva support directly, they will be best able to direct your query.

    If you are looking at the log files, specifically /var/log/cups/error_log, look for any lines that begin with “E” — they are errors.

    For information about debugging printing problems, here is the Fedora page about it. You are using Mandriva instead of Fedora, but the process is largely the same:
    http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_debug_printing_problems

    Reply
  18. PRINT HEAD » Choosing the best printer driver

    […] Fedora printing configuration tool, system-config-printer, tries to make a best guess about which driver is likely to be the most useful, taking into account […]

    Reply
  19. Print from Linux to Windows networked printer Drija

    […] It’s a GUI to CUPS configuration http://cyberelk.net/tim/software/system-config-printer/ […]

    Reply
  20. aimo avatar
    aimo

    What is this?

    My printer is printing a “cover page” before and after printing anything!
    There is a text logo in the middle: UNIX PRINTING SYSTEM

    I do not like this, because it spoils everything!

    What else can I do than go back using WINDOWS or buying a new printer?

    Reply
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