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I just bought a Canon MG5250 multifunction printer because I thought that it would work well with Ubuntu, but it's hard to get it to work.

How do I install this printer?

Torben Gundtofte-Bruun
  • 10,454

9 Answers9

10

I googled and found the instructions included below. The instructions worked: I now have a fully working printer with color and duplex! For B&W printing, follow Dahzler's answer.

Unresolved:

  • How to get scanning to work! (I will put a link here to a solution when I figure it out! There seems to be at least one intimidating method for experts.)
    • The scanner seems to be recognized by Canon's scangearmp but not by Ubuntu's built-in simple scanner app that I much prefer. See further details in the scanner question linked above.

Instructions:
The below is copied from http://linuxdeal.com/Printer-PIXMA-MG5220 but I have adapted it slightly to be easier to follow.

OS: Xubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal
Date: Jul 25th, 2011
Recommended 

          Printer  Scanner  
USB       Perfect  Untested  
Wireless  Perfect  Perfect

Driver instructions:

  1. Download the driver files to Downloads folder:
    Printer: http://support-my.canon-asia.com/contents/MY/EN/0100301702.html
    Scanner: http://support-my.canon-asia.com/contents/MY/EN/0100303002.html

  2. Unpack the tar.gz files by right clicking on them and selecting 'unpack here'

  3. Install the printer .deb packages by going into the folder and double clicking on the right .deb file for your system

    • 32-bit:
      cnijfilter-common_3.40-1_i386.deb
      cnijfilter-mg5200series_3.40-1_i386.deb

    • 64-bit:
      cnijfilter-common_3.40-1_amd64.deb
      cnijfilter-mg5200series_3.40-1_amd64.deb

    • Go to Application Menu > Printing > and search for a MG5200 printer if it has not been automatically added by now.

  4. Install the scanner .deb packages in the same way as the printer installers above:

    • 32-bit:
      scangearmp-common_1.60-1_i386.deb
      scangearmp-mg5200series_1.60-1_i386.deb

    • 64-bit:
      scangearmp-common_1.60-1_amd64.deb
      scangearmp-mg5200series_1.60-1_amd64.deb

    • If dpkg does not work then go into a command line and use the cd tool to change directory into the path were your unpacked files are, look for the install.sh file:

    • sudo sh install.sh

    Enjoy! :)

  5. Comments

I ran a test print that printed a test page with Grayscale, Red, Green, Blue, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black colors with an ubuntu header.

Community
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Torben Gundtofte-Bruun
  • 10,454
  • This solution is outdated, for community's sake. :) Recent Ubuntu versions can install from a huge list of network printers almost automatically. See Bernhards answer below. The scanner should work using SANE. – w-sky Oct 19 '17 at 04:05
6

Under newer Ubuntu versions (checked with 13.10 and later), just install the cups-backend-bjnp package to use your Canon Pixma MG520 via network. The Printer settings dialog will then find it when you tell it to add a new printer, and offer a Gutenprint driver to set it up.

Bernhard Reiter
  • 587
4

To print in grayscale only, duplicate your original printer and rename the new one something like "MG5250-Black-and-White". Then, in the Properties->"Job Options"->"Other Options (Advanced"), add the option "CNGrayscale" and change the value to "true".

Then, when you want to print B&W (greyscale), just choose that printer instead. I set it as my default printer since B&W is what I print mostly.

Dahzler
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  • There's a setting print-color-mode=color that I can set to monochrome instead, but when I click "Apply" it just reverts back to color. Your suggestion to actually add a new setting worked! I now have a true greyscale printer, as well as a color printer. Thank you! – Torben Gundtofte-Bruun Aug 20 '12 at 19:47
2

There's even a PPA you can use, it is as simple as this:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:michael-gruz/canon
sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install cnijfilter-common
sudo apt-get install cnijfilter-mg5200series
Valentin Klinghammer
  • 115
2

The name of the PPA has changed. I've used this on Precise and Saucy.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:michael-gruz/canon-trunk
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cnijfilter-common
Jim
  • 31
  • 1
2

I have a Canon MG5250. I had downloaded the .deb files from Canon's site but these installed driver version 3.4 which gave me limited functionality (e.g. only supported 600dpi). Having followed a mix of advice on this page (thank you!) I now have driver version 3.9 which supports up to 2400dpi amongst other features. Here's what I entered into a terminal:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:michael-gruz/canon-trunk
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install cnijfilter-common
sudo apt-get install cnijfilter-mg5200series

I tried it without the last line and only got driver version 3.4.

Scanner - following the above has got the scanner to work, but only using Canon's utility (not Simple Scan) and only on wirelessly connected devices (my net-book). It doesn't work on my desktop PC which the printer is connected to (USB).

Eric Carvalho
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user262393
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  • 1
2

I got this printer working on Ubuntu 16.04 Xenial (and it should also work for Vivid).

Unfortunately, there is no Xenial driver for the Canon Pixma MG5200 series (I have an MG5220). However, Michael Gruz's Utopic package works fine. Therefore, after adding his repo, you need to manually update it to point to the utopic repository. Here is how:

sudo bash
add-apt-repository ppa:michael-gruz/canon-trunk
sed -i 's/xenial/utopic/' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/michael-gruz-ubuntu-canon-trunk-xenial.list
apt-get update
apt-get install cnijfilter-mg5200series-64

(That installs the 64 bit version. There's also a ...-32 version available.)

adrenalin
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Jim Salem
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1

I know this is an old thread, but I think that still many users may be interested in this:

It's possible to make the Canon PIXMA MG5250 working with SimpleScan and others via SANE. The solution is to add the device to the PIXMA SANE service.

  1. Add your PIXMA device to /etc/sane.d/pixma.conf

    bjnp://<device_ip_address>

  2. To enable SANE, change the respective line in /etc/default/saned to

    `RUN=yes`

    Update: Most recent versions of SANE start automatically. Check if this configuration entry is really necessary in your setup beforehand. Thanks to w-sky for the hint.

  3. Start SANE.

    sudo service saned start

  4. Use the SANE-based scanning tool you like. Both SimpleScan and XSANE are working for me.

Sebastian Schlicht
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  • Most recent versions of SANE will start automatically and /etc/default/saned should not be changed. – w-sky Oct 19 '17 at 04:08
0

Sadly, I don't have much to provide in way of an answer other than to deal with ScanGearMP because SANE can't easily be configured for a dynamic IP address. This is the conclusion I've come to.

My CUPS configuration, which was configured using Canon's Asian MX470 series driver, works flawlessly by utilizing the cnijbe:// protocol. However, I still cannot figure out how to configure SANE with the device serial number as opposed to a dynamic IP which changes each time I cycle the power on my printer.

I have followed the advice of everyone here and elsewhere in configuring SANE, starting the backend, editing pixma.conf to (in vain) see if the cnijbe:// protocol would work.

Here is my CUPS URI: cnijbe://Canon/?port=net&serial=##-##-##-##-##-## (I replaced my serial number with number signs in the example above) I can print without issue, yet my scanner will only be recognized by ScangearMP.

To clarify, I am using MX-15 (Based on Debian 8.2) and SANE is simply INSANE because it simply won't find my scanner.

Killian Darkwater
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