That is so PUNK ROCK!

Lexmark Wireless Printer (Prospect Pro205 and similar) Setup Tips

There's a driver for this series of printer on Lexmark's web site. The software provides both the print drivers and printer and wireless set up utilities as well as a management interface to see ink status and perform some operations (Those operations can be performed using the menu on the printer as well).

The installation is pretty straight-forward. However there are some issues:

• On Ubuntu, System/Administration/Lexmark Printer Toolbox brings up the management interface. However, the ink levels are not seen. This is because the administration interface is not running as root, however the original setup is done as root. Before we figure out which script/app needs to have its permissions fixed or which group your username should be in, the quick and dirty way to see the ink levels is to manually run the printer utility as root.

  sudo /bin/bash /usr/lexinkjet/lxk09/bin/.scripts/lexijtools

• Wireless setup will fail because the printer will not detect any wireless networks. You cannot manually connect to one (like you would when the ESSID is not broadcast) either. Here's the issue. There's a utility wsulist which takes the usb device name as a parameter. On my system it was using /dev/usb/lp which does not exist. The correct device is /dev/usb/lp0. Also, this utility wants to run as root so you have to start the main utility like in the above issue too. (Do not manually run wsulist. While it won't hurt, it won't help either. The utility has to run it and use it to provide you a list of available networks).

  Create a symbolic link to the actual device and start the utility:

  sudo ln -s /dev/usb/lp0 /dev/usb/lp
sudo /bin/bash /usr/lexinkjet/lxk09/bin/.scripts/lexijtools


  The wireless setup icon is at the top right corner. You can't miss it. It should show you a list of wireless networks and let you set one up. Follow the rest of the prompts. There are actually some pretty neat things going on there. One of them is adding a separate print queue for the WIFI (separate from the same printer being connected via USB) which it then adds as another available option in the printer utility dropdown.

• Scanner only works as 'root'. Edit /lib/udev/rules.d/50-udev-default.rules and find the line that reads SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ENV{DEVTYPE}=="usb_device", MODE="0664". Change 0664 to 0666. Remove usb cable and reconnect it. It should now work. (Please note that this setting effectively allows EVERYBODY access to ALL USB DEVICES. I actually see nothing wrong with that at my home computer, so I will keep this workaround until I find a proper fix. This used to be handled by the 'scanner' group but that was apparently removed in karmic with nothing in its stead.)

Hint: If you select the name of the wireless printer queue in the Lexmark Printer Toolbox, the ink levels are shown there as upposed to the USB queue which requires root access.

Hint: At the end of the setup the network connections will be printed. Find the Address: line. You can put this on your browser and connect to your network print server. Please tell me if you find 'print queue' status information there.

PS: The installation utility actually asks for the 'root' password when it needs it. But a default Ubuntu install does not have a password set for 'root'. So I opted to run the app with 'sudo'. This might have caused some of the issues but I can't think how.