I've googled this one to the limit and I know the answer to the problem but I'm stumped for a solution - can anyone help please?
My printer is an Epson C64 and I'm using SuSE 9.1 which has libgimpprint 4.2.6 installed. This version of gimp-print has a known bug for my printer - see http://www.linuxprinting.org/pipermail/epson-list/2004q1/003527.html. It means all my print outs are too high and too much to the left. It's been fixed in version 4.2.7 which is now out. The link above details an "emergency fix" for 4.2.6 but it is only applicable when compiling from source. There lies the problem.
You can't uninstall libgimpprint easily due to dependency issues and there's no packaged libgimpprint 4.2.7 for Suse yet (if ever). There's also no libgimpprint source package at all. Further, SuSE does a strange thing in that libgimpprint is a seperate package to cups-printer-drivers which contains the necessary ppd files. However if you compile gimp-print from source it provides both??
Is there anyway I could apply this "emergency fix" described in the link above with my current set up?
With previous linux distros I have got around the problem by using a real dirty hack as follows;
1. note the names of all installed libgimpprint.so.x.x.x.x.'s in /usr/lib 2. Without uninstalling package libgimpprint, compile and install gimp-print from source 3. Delete files in 1, above and re-create as symbolic links to the new libgimpprint.so's created in 2. 4. Re-start cups (/etc/init.d/cups restart) 5. Re-configure printer and manually select the newly installed ppd file.
I really don't want to break my system this time, as there must be some way to beat this beast, so would really appreciate some advice.
Many thanks,
Martin
Hi Martin
This may sound long winded and A about F for you, but it has served me well in the past when needing a clear path to re-install or upgrade with RPM. First, locate the source rpm for the offending package and install it - This will do nothing more than unpack some tarballs to /usr/src/packages/SOURCES. Uncompress the source tarball, apply the fix, and rebuild the tarball. If you have a diff, things are a little easier, as this an be placed in the same directory, and a simple line added to the spec file in /usr/src/packages/SPECS. Prior to rebuilding the binary, you would want to increment the extra-version tag so that you avoid having to use a force flag when it comes to installing the final rpm. With the changes in place, run rpmbuild in the SPECS dir, and you should end up with an RPM containing your bug fix.
Alternatively, download the sources from a cvs repository and compile the latest bleeding edge code.
Regards, Paul.
On Tuesday 24 August 2004 21:46, Martin Collins wrote:
I really don't want to break my system this time, as there must be some way to beat this beast, so would really appreciate some advice.
Hi Martin
After a fit of boredom, I decided to try this myself... Apart from the usual problems of missing headers associated with not installing varius development packages, the only issue was glib-config. For some reason, SuSE puts lumps this with a lot of other Gimp headers/libs in the /opt tree - Sufice to say, the build process fails !
However, after a little bit of hackery, I finally got the rpmbuild to run successfully, so if you need libgimpprint, drop me a note - BTW it is ~1.5M
Regards, Paul.
On Tuesday 24 August 2004 22:11, Paul wrote:
Prior to rebuilding the binary, you would want to increment the extra-version tag so that you avoid having to use a force flag when it comes to installing the final rpm. With the changes in place, run rpmbuild in the SPECS dir, and you should end up with an RPM containing your bug fix.
Many thanks Paul, yes please I would love a copy - thank you. Could I also ask for a copy of the spec file you used please?
Sorry I've been a bit silent on this, but your first e-mail gave me a lot of work to do as I've never built an rpm before (scary). But I finally did it with your advice and my printer prints great now. However, now there is a little problem with YAST.
First off there is no sources selection box against the libgimpprint package in YAST, and it took me a good while to find out that the sources for libgimpprint are actually contained in the sources for the ghostscript library!! (explain that to a newbie!)
I didn't have any dependency issues but did have the glib-config error like yourself (put a link to it in /usr/bin).
I don't think I incremented the version number properly in the spec file (I assume that's where I was supposed to do it!). I did end up with an rpm named libgimpprint-4.2.6-42 and installed it but in YAST libgimpprint now has a padlock symbol, is highlighted in red and under the "versions" tab lists 4.2.6-41 (in black) and 4.2.6-42 (in green with tick box) - surely it should just be listing 4.2.6-42 in green without the padlock and red highlighting?
After all my efforts in trying not to break my system, I think that's exactly what I've ended up doing - doh! We live and learn.
I think to fix this I will need to build a 4.2.6-43!
Best regards,
Martin
On Thu, 2004-08-26 at 12:57, Paul wrote:
Sufice to say, the build process fails !
However, after a little bit of hackery, I finally got the rpmbuild to run successfully, so if you need libgimpprint, drop me a note - BTW it is ~1.5M
Regards, Paul.
Hi Martin
I must admit, I tend to use the command line incantations when manipulating RPMs.. Not being that familiar with Yast, I need to refer to the built in help screen... The padlock symbol indicates that the package is from a non SuSE source and should not be over-written by updates from SuSE - This can be over-ridden by the command line or (I suspect) by a simple widget within Yast. The padlock certainly does not indicate a broken system..
The RPM I compiled ended up with a 4.2.6-191 version - This was from an original SuSE 9.1 source package... Will email it off list.
Regards, Paul.
On Thursday 26 August 2004 23:34, Martin Collins wrote:
I don't think I incremented the version number properly in the spec file (I assume that's where I was supposed to do it!). I did end up with an rpm named libgimpprint-4.2.6-42 and installed it but in YAST libgimpprint now has a padlock symbol, is highlighted in red and under the "versions" tab lists 4.2.6-41 (in black) and 4.2.6-42 (in green with tick box) - surely it should just be listing 4.2.6-42 in green without the padlock and red highlighting?
After all my efforts in trying not to break my system, I think that's exactly what I've ended up doing - doh! We live and learn.
I think to fix this I will need to build a 4.2.6-43!
-
Martin Collins -
Paul