Wieslaw Samek

Page Pro

by Wieslaw Samek
on Thursday, July 21, 2005
It is not difficult to get Minolta PagePro "Windows only" laser printer to print using CUPS (The Common UNIX Printing System) on SuSE 9.3. The following pages describe steps specific to Minolta PagePro 1250W. Other printers (like Minolta PagePro 1250E) do not need this dancing around. Only Minolta PagePro 1250W needs the steps below, because it has been sold as "Windows only" printer. Manufacturer does not offer or support this printer on OS other than Windows (no Mac, no Linux). The Linux driver has been written by Manuel Tobias Schiller. In my opinion CUPS is the easiest way to configure printing on Linux. If you ever tried to configure lpd (the old and original way to get printers working on any UNIX version), you would agree. There are three distinct steps that must be followed in sequence.
  1. CUPS installation and configuration.
  2. PPD file installation.
  3. Driver compilation and installation.
It is best to run the commands in the steps below as the root user from shell. Browser is ran from regular, non root account.

Step 1. CUPS installation and configuration.

Make sure cups is installed by running the following command from shell. 
rpm -qa|grep cups
If no packages are listed, install cups package using YaST. The first stumbling block will be to get to CUPS administration. The default installation is missing passwd.md5 file and below are two steps to fix it. From shell as root run the following commands. 
touch /etc/cups/passwd.md5
lppasswd -a -g sys root
Important notes! The user must be root, because that is how default /etc/cups/cupsd.conf is configured. If you want to mess with cupsd.conf, do it on your own. The password for user root generated above in /etc/cups/passwd.md5 is not related to "real" root password that is kept in /etc/shadow. To verify that everything is working run the following command from shell as root. 
/etc/init.d/cups restart
Then enter the following URL from your favorite browser. 
http://localhost:631
You should see greenish-brown default CUPS page, where all printer configuration is done the easy way. If not, then you probably messed up /etc/cups/cupsd.conf. Remove cups completely and reinstall it the right way.

Step 2. PPD file installation.

Go to main Linux printing page 
www.linuxprinting.org/
Select from the menu on the left side "Printer Listings" to get to the following page. 
http://www.linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi
Next to the first "Show" button select "Minolta" and "PagePro 1250W". Press the "Show" button to the left of the selections you made to get to the following page. 
www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Minolta-PagePro_1250W
Select "download PPD" or follow the link below to get PPD file. 
http://www.linuxprinting.org/ppd-o-matic.cgi?driver=min12xxw&printer=Minolta-PagePro_1250W&show=0
Compress downloaded file by running the following command from shell as root. 
gzip Minolta-PagePro_1250W-min12xxw.ppd
Copy the resulting file to /usr/share/cups/model/Minolta by running the following command from shell as root. 
cp -a Minolta-PagePro_1250W-min12xxw.ppd.gz /usr/share/cups/model/Minolta/
Restart CUPS, because we updated the driver list by running the following command from shell as root. 
/etc/init.d/cups restart

Step 3. Driver compilation and installation.

Now we need the driver itself. Press the back button on the browser or get to previous page by following the link below. 
http://www.linuxprinting.org/show_printer.cgi?recnum=Minolta-PagePro_1250W
Select "Home page" to get to the following page. 
http://www.hinterbergen.de/mala/min12xxw/
Download the current version of the source min12xxw-0.0.8.tar.gz Extract and compile the source by running the commands below from shell as root. 
tar xfz min12xxw-0.0.8.tar.gz
cd min12xxw-0.0.8
./config
make
make install
make clean
That is it! Enter the following URL from your favorite browser and add the new printer from administration menu. 
http://localhost:631
It worked for me! I have done this on two separate machines P3 and P4 in 64bit mode. Let me know if you encounter problems.

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