# Printing, Faxing and Scanning

&legalnotice;

## Printing

Most printers will be automatically supported by Ubuntu. The Printer Configuration application allows you to add printers, as well as modify their settings. You can also use this application to share the printer with other computers on a network, disable the printer, or restart it.

### Local Printing

A local printer is one which is directly connected to your computer (as opposed to a network printer, discussed in the following section).

To setup a new local printer, plug your printer into your computer and power it on. Most printers will automatically be detected and configured. Once detected, a printer icon will appear in the notification area and after waiting a few moments, you should get a popup with the text Printer added.

If your printer was not detected after a few moments, then you will need to follow these steps:

- Obtain the model name of your printer.

- Ensure the printer is turned on.

- Choose &printing;.

- Click the New button or go to Server New Printer.

- Your printer should be automatically detected. If so, simply click Forward and then Apply.

- Finally, you can enter in a description and location for your printer.

If your printer was not automatically detected, you can try to select the port and printer driver manually. Some printers need further setup. Search the databases at LinuxPrinting.org or check the Ubuntu Wiki Printer page for information on your printer.

### Network Printing

You can also configure your Ubuntu system to send print jobs to a remote print server. Remote printers are hosted somewhere on a network. To configure a remote printer:

- Obtain the model name of your printer.

- Ensure the printer is turned on.

- Choose &printing;.

- Click the New button or go to Server New Printer.

- Expand Network Printer.

- A list of detected printers will be displayed. If your desired printer appears, select it. If your printer is directly connected to a Windows machine on your network, choose Windows Printer via SAMBA. Otherwise, select the protocol your printer uses to communicate, or click Find Network Printer to manually enter a hostname or IP.

- Click Forward and insert the details of the network printer.

- Click Apply.

- Finally, you can enter in a description and location for your printer.

If you do not know the protocol or details of your network printer, you should consult your network administrator.

### Testing a Printer

To check if your printer works correctly:

- Choose &printing;.

- Right click on the printer's name in the list.

- Click Properties.

- Under the Settings tab, Click Print Test Page. A page will then be printed if your printer is working correctly.

### How can I check the ink levels of my printer?

To find out how much ink is left in your printer, follow the instructions which apply to your printer:

- Hewlett-Packard (HP) printers: Press Alt F2, type `hp-toolbox` and click Run. Select the Supplies tab in the HP Device Manager window which appears to view a summary of ink levels.

- Epson and some Canon printers: Install the mtink package and click &mtink; to check your ink levels.

- Some other Epson and Canon printers: Install the inkblot package, press Alt F2, type `inkblot` and click Run. A printer icon will appear in the notification area on the top panel; click it to view ink levels.

For printers from other manufacturers, the best chance of viewing ink levels for your printer in Ubuntu is to install an official Linux printer driver from your manufacturer if one exists.

## Faxing

efax-gtk can be used to send and receive faxes using a fax modem. It requires a supported fax modem to be installed for it to function correctly.

It also has an interface to provide a virtual printer for sending faxes from word processors and similar programs, along with automatically email a received fax to a designated user, and can automatically print a received fax.

To run efax-gtk, click &efax-gtk;.

More information is available from the following locations:

- Ubuntu Community support pages

- Efax-gtk website

## Scanning

Many scanners are automatically supported by Ubuntu, and should be easy to install and operate. This section will walk you through how to use your scanner and what to do if Ubuntu does not detect your scanner.

### Does my scanner work with Ubuntu?

There are three ways to see if your scanner works in Ubuntu:

- Simply plug it in and try it! If it is a newer Universal Serial Bus (USB) scanner, it is likely that it will just work.

- Check the list of supported scanners for Ubuntu.

- Check the SANE project listing of support scanners. SANE is the software used by Ubuntu for most of its scanner support.

### Using your scanner

To scan a document:

- Place what you want to scan on the scanner.

- Click &simple-scan;.

- Alternately, pressing the scan button on the scanner should also work.

### What if it says "No devices available"?

There are two reasons why you might get this message:

1. Your scanner is not supported in Ubuntu. For example, most parallel port scanners and Lexmark All-in-One printer/scanner/faxes are not supported.

2. The driver for your scanner is not being loaded automatically.

You may be able to get your scanner working by installing a driver or altering some configuration files. Please ask for advice on the Ubuntu forums or similar.

To get some scanners working, you may need to plug in the scanner after the computer has booted.

### Manually installing a scanner

There are some scanners that have less than complete drivers from the SANE project. They can sometimes be used, but not all the features may work.

- Install the libsane-extras package.

- Press Alt F2, type `gksudo gedit /etc/sane.d/dll.conf` into the box and click Run to open the SANE driver file for editing.

- Enable the right driver for your scanner by removing the # from in front of the name of the driver. You may need to search the web to find out which driver is the right one.

- Save the file and open Xsane (&xsane;). Your scanner will hopefully work.