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Common Issues and Troubleshooting

Some of these issues are discussed in the Ubuntu Forum Thread in more detail or with respect to specific printers.

Failure to Delete cdroot Folder

The permissions on the folders in the cdroot folder are often wrong. A simple in the cdroot folder will ensure that you can remove the folders, either directly or from your trash.

Decompression Errors

Due to some strange settings Samsung must be using to package their archives, mostly but not entirely with v2 archives, they probably will not work if you try to unpack them "normally" using Archive Manage (File-roller), tar, or any other direct tar GUI, or alternatively they will unpack but be corrupt (unusual errors occur when running the install script). However, you should be able to unpack them using: where "file" is the specific name of the archive you downloaded.

Installer Crashes

If the installation crashes, you may have unpacked cdroot into a path with a space in the name. The installer can't deal with this, the full path must not contain spaces.

Uninstall Fails

A variety of errors may occur when trying to uninstall. I personally have never managed to get the uninstaller to work, although others have reported success. If you can't uninstall the files installed directly by Samsung, you will need to look at the page for the version driver you are using to see what files need to be removed manually.

Intereference With modprobe

Samsung installs the file /etc/modprobe.conf for parallel support, which cripples modprobe behavior (hardware support for certain devices). These packages avoid this problem; the simplest solution if you are using the archives from Samsung is to delete the file.

Setting the Default Paper Size

Independent of anything to do with the Samsung Unified Linux Driver, you can change the default paper size for all applications this way: edit (as root) /etc/papersize to say "letter" or "A4" or whatever your preference is.

I Installed the Packages but No Printer is Installed

The packages do not autodetect printers, you will need to add it manually (using normal desktop environment tools).

The Samsung Installer Installed the Wrong Printer (or the Right One But It Doesn't Work)

Delete the auto-installed printer and install a new one manually (using normal desktop environment tools is safest). Alternatively, check the printer properties (in the Configurator or default CUPS tool) to ensure the correct driver is selected, that the printer is "enabled", and that the printer is "accepting jobs".

Printer Lockups When Printing Large Files

In some cases, other printing issues (such as failure to print large graphics) can also be resolved by using a related model. For example, my CLP-550N sometimes freezes when I print files >3-5 MB. To work around this, I have installed a second printer (still pointing to the same physical printer) as the CLP-500N model, which then handles large files fine (albeit with somewhat poorer color quality). This is very trial and error.

Strange Text/Graphics Artifacts When Printing

Although this seems to be somewhat less of a problem than it used to be, the Samsung driver may cause weird artifacts when printing text (i.e., poor quality) and occasionally graphics. In this case, you should probably look into alternative approaches (see the forum post), try installing your printer as a related model (this is a bit hit-or-miss), or post to the forum in case someone else has solved the problem for your particular model. This seems to primarily occur with some CLP- and CLX- printers.

What All The Binary Pieces Do

(Note that the v2 drivers have a few extra pieces in /opt and a few missing pieces in /usr, but I won't discuss those.)

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