Product

Minolta Magicolor 2300 DL

Driver

Use the very excellent "foo2zjs" driver maintained (please send him the cash he deserves for this) by Rick Richardson: http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/

Specification

Basic color desktop laser printer. Has Ethernet (tcp/ip) networking built in by default, as well as USB and parallel interfaces.

Developer specification

http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/

Model information

Installation for SuSE 9.0

Once the driver is installed, the printer can be configured very easily using SuSE 9.0's "YaST" tool, and used by means of the "cups" printing system.

Installation for Debian Sid

Install the required packages:

  apt-get install cupsys
  apt-get install cupsys-client
  apt-get install gs-esp
  apt-get install cupsys-bsd
  apt-get install foomatic-filters

Make sure your userid is in the "lpadmin group":

  /usr/sbin/usermod -G lpadmin username

Build the driver:

  wget http://foo2zjs.rkkda.com/foo2zjs.tar.gz
  tar zxf foo2zjs.tar.gz
  cd foo2zjs
  make
  ./getweb 2300

Install the driver and restart CUPS:

  su
  make install
  /etc/init.d/cupsys restart

Connect to CUPS administration interface. Either login using your regular userid (make sure your user is in the lpadmin group as explained above for this to work), or login as the "root" user.

Click on the (Printers) segment of the (ESP) menu bar along the top. Click on the (Add Printer) button.

Add New Printer
          Name:   minolta_monochrome
      Location:   tranquility
   Description:   Konica Minolta magicolor 2300 DL

Device for minolta_monochrome
        Device:   AppSocket/HP JetDirect
Device URI for minolta_monochrome
    Device URI:   socket://192.168.1.130:9100
Model/Driver for minolta_monochrome
          Make:   MINOLTA-QMS
Model/Driver for minolta_monochrome
         Model:   Minolta magicolor 2300 DL Foomatic/foo2zjs (recommended) (en)

Click on the (Printers) segment of the (ESP) menu bar along the top. Click on the (Configure Printer) button. Change Page Size from A4 to "Letter":

     Page Size:   Letter

Now you have finished adding the monochrome queue. To add a color printer queue, proceed as follows. Click on the (Printers) segment of the (ESP) menu bar along the top. Click on the (Add Printer) button.

Add New Printer
          Name:   minolta_color
      Location:   tranquility
   Description:   Konica Minolta magicolor 2300 DL

Device for minolta_color
        Device:   AppSocket/HP JetDirect
Device URI for minolta_color
    Device URI:   socket://192.168.1.130:9100
Model/Driver for minolta_color
          Make:   MINOLTA-QMS
Model/Driver for minolta_color
         Model:   Minolta magicolor 2300 DL Foomatic/foo2zjs (recommended) (en)

Click on the (Printers) segment of the (ESP) menu bar along the top.
Click on the (Configure Printer) button.
Change Page Size from A4 to "Letter":
    Color Mode:   Color - Graphics and Text
     Page Size:   Letter

Remember to set the monochrome printer as the default: Click on the (Printers) segment of the (ESP) menu bar along the top. Click on the (Set As Default) button, for the minolta_monochrome printer.

See also the printing intro section in the main Debian guide, for more info.

Ubuntu Dapper Drake

This article suggests some much-needed re-working of the kludges made to CUPS interface in Ubuntu, which may have left you wondering why members of the lpadmin group are not able to administer CUPS. It's because, as a security precaution, the cupsys user is no longer included in the shadow group (because that's the file where the password hashes are stored, and you shouldn't let anyone see them). But if you're just setting up a printer, then to get the admin interface working again (insecurely), you can temporarily add cupsys to the shadow group using something like this:

  adduser cupsys shadow
  invoke-rc.d cupsys restart

Distro here

• SuSE 9.0
• Debian Sid
• Ubuntu Dapper Drake

Current support

Supports printing from Firefox, "xpdf" and "acroread" right away, and from the gimp after a slight configuration change.

Own experience

Monochrome printing is perfect, color printing is highly satisfactory for most web graphics. Additional memory can be plugged in (easy to find on eBay, just 256MB plain PC100 non-ECC non-registered desktop memory).

Seeing any Yellow Dots?

Apparently the 2300DL is in the list of printers which print yellow dots to facilitate tracking of your color printouts. See here for Bunnie's guide to this unadvertised misfeature.

Firewall considerations

When using a local firewall, e.g. guarddog, you'll need to add a "user defined" protocol for port 9100, and open outbound access on that protocol from zone "Local" to zone "Internet". The port 9100 is associated with the HP DirectJet Card protocol, as can be seen from the services file included with the nmap package. It seems that the Minolta 2300DL uses the same port, albiet for a very different protocol.

dpkg -L nmap|grep services
/usr/share/nmap/nmap-services
cat /usr/share/nmap/nmap-services|grep 9100
jetdirect         9100/tcp   # HP JetDirect card

Comments / Questions

-- PeterKnaggs - 12 Feb 2006

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