Installing Canon printer drivers

Support and Help
1

Ubuntu Desktop 24.04.2.0 LTS Focal Fossa Release amd64

Hi, hoping someone might be able to help? My Ubuntu knowledge usually only extends as far as searching for instructions to put into Terminal to install the software I need and searching for simple methods to get things working but with this I’m stuck…

I have a Canon Pixma M3650s printer that I want to install drivers for. I downloaded the tar.gz package for this printer from Canon’s support site - cnijfilter2-source-5.20-1.tar.gz. and tried to follow the instructions in the Readme in it. They said the following:

How to build rpm:

* When you build one printer driver package.
--------------------------------------------
$ rpmbuild -tb cnijfilter-source-X.XX-Y.tar.gz

I made sure I opened Terminal from the folder where the tar.gz file was saved and typed in the rpmbuild command as above, adjusting for the actual filename I had and Terminal returned this:

error: Failed build dependencies: cups-devel is needed by cnijfilter2-5.20-1.x86_64

I did go on a wild goose chase to try and install cups-devel (whatever that is) and it ended up looking like it was already installed so I’m a bit lost with where to go now.

I did try other ways to install the files that involved extracting the tar.gz but hit dead ends every time.

Does anyone have a reliable way of installing this sort of thing? I am of course happy to try suggestions and post back my results.

Many thanks to anyone who can help/advise!

Rob

2

Hello and welcome to the community.

First question: What’s your installed Ubuntu - is it Ubuntu 20.04 LTS (Focal Fossa) or Ubuntu Desktop 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat)?

Second question: why not download the debian Packagearchive from canon? Incompatible Ubuntu Release?

3

Thank you g-schick,

It’s Focal Fossa I’m on and must admit I had not seen the debian Packagearchive on the Canon site.

I’ve downloaded it but not sure what to do next - is it the same rpmbuild command as in my original message, obviously with the new deb filename instead? I have to pop away from my machine now (family duties) so may not get back to it until tomorrow so please don’t think I’m being rude if I don’t reply very quickly to further messages.

Thank you again.

4

Extract the archive. Then open a terminal window and enter the folder of the extracted files. Execute chmod +x install.sh to make it executable. Then start the script with ./install.sh. Maybe you need to run it as sudo.

I started the script on my notebook but as I do not have this printer I wasn’t able to check the installation any further. I guess you should just follow the instructions of the installer.

5

Amazing - worked like a dream and I am now printing successfully via a WiFi connection to the printer! Once again thank you so much :slight_smile: :grinning:

Kind regards,
Rob

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