Canon CAPT

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Note: See CUPS for the main article, and CUPS/Printer-specific problems for information on non-CAPT Canon printers

CAPT (Canon Advanced Printing Technology) is Canon's proprietary driver, supporting the Canon i-Sensys series of laser printers. For more information, see Setting up CAPT printers on Ubuntu.

Installation

Install the capt-src^AUR package. It depends on 32-bit library packages and requires enabling multilib.

There is also an open source CAPT driver in early alpha stage not described here, available as captdriver-git^AUR.

Configuration

Canon's driver uses a local daemon to communicate with the printer, and wraps that using a CUPS driver.

To configure the printer, follow the CUPS article, adding a CAPT printer and using a Printer URI of ccp://localhost:59787. Find the right model using lpinfo -m, or check the table provided on the Ubuntu help page, which matches each supported printer with its corresponding PPD.

Note:

Installing CAPT printers via the CUPS web interface may not work [1]. Instead, use the CLI tools.
If port 59787 does not work, try port 59687.
Some models have multiple PPDs, where the last letter indicates the regional model (J = Japan, K = United Kingdom, S = United States)

Next, register the printer with the CAPT driver itself via ccpdadmin. Replace queue_name with the queue descriptive name and printer_address with either the USB port (e.g. /dev/usb/lp0) in case of a local printer or the IP address, prefixed by net: (e.g. net:192.168.1.100), in case of a network printer:

# ccpdadmin -p queue_name -o printer_address

For example, for a USB printer:

# ccpdadmin -p LBP6310 -o /dev/usb/lp0

Or for a network printer:

# ccpdadmin -p LBP6310 -o net:192.168.1.100

Start/enable the CAPT daemon with ccpd.service.

To remove a printer:

# ccpdadmin -x queue_name

CAPT status monitor

Local CUPS

The driver includes a status monitor which can be launched with

$ captstatusui -P printer_model

e.g.

$ captstatusui -P LBP6310

If you only want the status monitor to pop up when a problem occurs, simply append the -e switch:

$ captstatusui -P LBP6310 -e

Remote CUPS

Unfortunately, a local installation of captstatusui will not detect CAPT printers on a remote CUPS server.

Remote print monitoring can be achieved, however, using SSH and X11 forwarding.

Warning: X11 forwarding has important security implications, especially when using the -Y switch (ForwardX11Trusted, required for the CAPT status monitor to work via X11 Forwarding). See X11 forwarding for further information.

Note: There are many ways to set up X11 forwarding. For security reasons, this example is based on public key authentication, a dedicated SSH user account, and SSH running on the CUPS server. Adapt these instructions to your specific configuration.

Client configuration

create a new SSH key ~/.ssh/capt and copy the public key to the remote server
create a file captstatusui.sh with the following content, make it executable and place it in your autostart folder:

#!/bin/sh
ssh -T -Y -i ~/.ssh/capt remote_server_hostname_or_IP_address < /dev/null

Server configuration

create a new user capt
append the following section to /etc/ssh/sshd_config and restart the SSH daemon or socket

...
Match User capt
       X11Forwarding yes
       PermitTTY no
       ForceCommand captstatusui -P printer_model -e
       AuthenticationMethods publickey

e.g.

...
Match User capt
       X11Forwarding yes
       PermitTTY no
       ForceCommand captstatusui -P LBP6310 -e
       AuthenticationMethods publickey

This can be extended to include multiple users (using a single, shared SSH key or each with a unique SSH key) by adding each user to a capt group, then using a Match Group rule:

...
Match Group capt
       X11Forwarding yes
       PermitTTY no
       ForceCommand captstatusui -P LBP6310 -e
       AuthenticationMethods publickey