Troubleshooting/Samsung scx-4500W

Mike Cloaked <mike.cloaked at gmail.com> posted the following commentary regarding installation on Fedora 14. Note that some references are to local directories, and you may have to edit these to suit your system.

Setting up the Printer

The following set up technique works for recent versions of Fedora from F12 to F14.

Download the driver set and untar them. The drivers are available from Samsung's web page.

Do not install their script(s). Instead pull the following two files out of their Unified Driver file: Add the file rastertosamsungspl (from cdroot/Linux/i386/at_root/usr/lib/cups/filter/rastertosamsungspl) to /usr/lib/cups/filter/
and scx4500w.ppd (from cdroot/Linux/noarch/at_opt/share/ppd/) was needed also. You need to cd to /usr/share/cups/model/foomatic-db-ppds and make directory "samsung", then

gzip -c
/path-to-my-scx4500w/scx4500w.ppd > samsung/scx4500w.ppd.gz

Check that the selinux contexts of the new files match the other in that directory. That is all that is needed. Next plug in the usb line to the main machine running Fedora 12, 13 or 14, and turn on the printer whilst tailing the messages file.

On startup it should immediately recognise the printer and the messages file should show that the device had been found correctly, and see lines like:

Nov 22 18:22:59 home1 kernel: [  336.170027] usb 1-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
Nov 22 18:22:59 home1 kernel: [  336.284908] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=04e8, idProduct=342b
Nov 22 18:22:59 home1 kernel: [  336.284911] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
Nov 22 18:22:59 home1 kernel: [  336.284914] usb 1-1: Product: SCX-4500W Series
 

Nov 22 18:22:59 home1 kernel: [  336.284917] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.

A window pops up saying the printer has been added and offers to check the settings - all that needs changing is the paper size from the US Letter to A4 size and then run a test page - which should look perfect.

Then print a system status page from the printer itself which should be fine, and then finally a test print from the main machine.

Then check that the printer is visible to other machines on the LAN. If not then go to localhost:631 in a browser and ensure that the printer is shared to other machines.

You can try to use the ethernet cable later, or change the wireless settings. I have to put it on the local network and given it a sensible ip address rather than the default 192. address that it comes with since my network is 10.0.0.x.

Scanning works nicely but a couple of config tweaks are necessary.

The printer is working, despite being an unsupported printer - and only needs the two files pulled from the Samsung linux application allows the printer to work nicely.

Scanning

I have also now tested scanning on the scx-4500w. For Fedora F14 it was necessary to add under the Samsung section of the file /lib/udev/rules.d/65-libsane.rules:

# Samsung SCX-4500W
 ATTRS{idVendor}=="04e8", ATTRS{idProduct}=="342b", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes"

This was the only step needed. Once the machine was rebooted then scanning worked (eg via GIMP)

Then I simply fired up the GIMP and asked it to scan - it found the scanner, and it worked without any further setup.

So although I have only tested the printing and scanning capability on Fedora 14 via the usb port it does work very nicely.

Yet to test:

1. printer access via ethernet
2. printer access via wireless
3. scanner access via ether/wifi

If anyone has done any other tests on this Samsung SCX-4500W and has step-by-step setup details I would be interested to hear the information. Either way this is a nice printer, and very quiet in operation, and does look pretty cool too!

Network Access

The printer arrives set up with a default ip address of 192.0.0.192.

In order to get the network interface working in my local LAN which is the in the ip range 10.0.x.x I initially booted up an old laptop and plugged in the crossover ethernet cable that comes with the printer. Then I stopped the NetworkManager service, and then started the "network" service.

Next step is to become root and put the laptop on the same ip range as the printer by typing:

ifconfig eth0 192.0.0.10 up

Then start Firefox and go to the address 192.0.0.192 which immediately connects to the embedded management interface on the printer ( called "SyncThru" in Samsung parlance ) and displayed as a web page in Firefox.

Then it is straightforward to find the network page and change the ip address to either a static ip in the range of my local LAN or let it continue to use DHCP. In my case once I had the MAC address of the printer network interface I could add that to my local dhcp server config and give the printer a local name.

If you are not running your own dhcp server then it is probably easier to give it a static ip on the same range as your local LAN addresses.

The networking is arranged so that if the ethernet cable is plugged in on the printer then it uses the wired interface and if not then it will use the wireless interface.

So next go to the wireless interface page in SyncThru, and set up the required wireless settings for your own local wireless access point. In my case it uses WPA2 with AES encryption but your mileage may vary.

As soon as I disconnected the ethernet cable the printer connected to my wireless access point and received its ip address via my dhcp server. Then firing up Firefox on my main machine and going to the printer ip address connected me to the embedded management interface again (SyncThru). From there the usual range of printer settings was accessible and also monitoring of page usage and toner use.

Next to get printing via the network instead of via USB.

1. In the main machine go to System -> Administration -> Printing -> New Printer
2. Select Network Printer and the drop-down HP JetDirect (even though it isn't).
3. Use the known printer IP in the "host" dialog and leave the default "Port 9100". Click Forward.
4. Select ppd file (as in the sections above) and navigate to it - set the remaining parameters required. Change paper to A4.

Then I sent a test page - and printed a mail item - which seemed fine apart from the page size being a touch too small for the writing at the top and bottom. That can no doubt be tweaked as necessary later. Then any other machine on the network can either use the printer via cups or set it as an independent route via the network as above.

Since the wired cable had been removed this test print went via the wireless network to the scx-4500w. If the printer is wired to your local router via ethernet then the print goes via the wired router - you can't do wireless and wired at the same time.

Scanning via the Network

Scanning via the network is possible by making one simple addition to the file /etc/sane.d/xerox_mfp.conf. Simply add the following lines to the bottom of the file:

#Samsung scx4500w wireless ip network address
tcp xx.xx.xx.xx

where xx.xx.xx.xx is the static ip address of the printer that is set up using the SyncThru management interface.

When starting up xsane a choice of two printers now shows up, and selecting the option with the tcp address defined above allows xsane to access the scanner via the network instead of via usb. This may be slower than usb but it does work.

Having the multifunction printer working with the printer via usb, and the scanner via the network allows a simple workaround for the current known issues where usb2 scanners plugged into a usb3 port causes xsane to hang, which is a common bug in the xhci driver code with the 3.12 and 3.13 kernels.