Linux and the Canon ir2230 Copier

At one of the churches I serve, there is a Canon iR 2230 digital copier, called an “ImageRunner.” It’s a nice monochrome copier, especially nice for a small congregation. This one has a network interface, and can function as a network printer with Canon’s proprietary UFRII printer language. Canon also reportedly offers a network interface that supports PCL, but I haven’t had any success in getting one. It’s probably expensive anyway.

For almost 2.5 years now, I’ve been trying to figure out how to print to the ir2230 from Linux, without success. There were drivers from some European web site that didn’t work, and suggestions from a local tech to try drivers for similar machines — that also didn’t work.

Today, I did another search, and stumbled upon a Japanese web site that has drivers available for CUPS, in both rpm and debian packages. Holding my breath, I installed the debs. I can happily report that the CUPS test page printed flawlessly. The driver includes a PPD that uses Ghostscript to process the Postscript job before sending it. The driver seems to support duplexing, as well as collating, stapling, and hole punching. There’s also a little GTK+ program for sending jobs through CUPS, which supports the device’s features more explicitly.

The place to get that driver is here. Just scroll down until you see the links for RPMs or Debs.

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