So, I make quite some steps forward - currently I am fiddling around with local snapshots, remote snapshots, remote incremental snapshots and the combination of those three - goal is to have local snapshots after updates, and remote snapshots (incremental) like once a month or so, and after manual snapping (for example priot to install a game or something similar). This will require more experience, but I am getting more and more annoyed by my productive setup - I started to like my EOS!
One thing that is still missing though is my printer. This is something where Manjaro really shines - it makes setting up printers in KDE just easy. It is just working ootB. In EOS I made the same experience like in every other Linux I tried so far: You wanna print? NOPE! I have an Epson Workforce printer, and in Manjaro it was like "Goto System Settings → Printer → add, wait, select printer, wait for driver download, configure, done. Under EOS it somehow finds my printer, but doesn’ find the driver. It also does only finde one printer setup, whereas Manjaro does find two - “normal” and driverless. Both are working, whereas the EOS way is NOT working. Having no printer is a nogo, so the question is: What does Manjaro different from EOS (or Arch, that is)? My first guess was the Manjaro printer metapackage:
So I checked the pkgbuild and installed all those packages - unfortunately to no avail. Any other ideas to mimick the Manjaro behaviour regarding printers?
Most of the stuff in the discovery (btw imho far from the best name for a wiki) was allready done, repeated nontheless. To no avail, still not working as easy as in Manjaro. Printer is an Epson WF-4830.
Question is: what is Manjaro doing with their printer package that the experience is so much different?
Btw, I don’t think this will really be appreciated.
What packages? Manjaro has nothing to do with endeavourOS. Printers have to be installed properly or they don’t work. Depends on the printer and what it uses for drivers. Also is it connected to usb or wireless Etc. It all makes a difference. I think you need this package. Cups should already be installed. You then just have to go through the process to get it set up and working by adding the printer. It is explained in the wiki.
I’m not a printer expert. I just know if i have it in front of me i can hook it up usually.
This is true, the question is: Why is it SO much easier on Manjaro than on EOS (or Arch, that is - tested both)? I don’t want to install drivers by hand, because nowadays this can be done automatically with driver-DBs. Something that Windows and Apple do quite easily, and something that Manjaro does quite easy as well - not ootb easy, but almost. If you install a naked Manjaro and follow this guide:
and then try to add a printer within your network you get the following:
and from there on it is a tom of manual stuff, selecting the correct printer driver, downloading another package, and more stuff which is kinda unnecessary, because it is doable the convenient way. The question is: What is doing Manjaro differently from Arch or EOS? Because as soon as I know that I can mimick it. I tried with the installation of all packages qhich are part of Manjar-Printer, but to no avail.
It confuses me that this is not integrated into Arch, because printing is quite important - and easy network printer setup should be doable in 2023…
Edit: O, and btw I have tested it with my old printer - a canon one - and the experience was the same.
The manjaro-printer package doesn’t appear to do anything special. It installs a bunch of printer related packages and hides some entries from the menu.
Just to confirm, you have cups-filters installed, correct?
Hence my confusion why it is working under Manjaro - can’t find anything beside manjaro-printer. And yes, cups-filters are installed.
Could it be some Windows / bonjour shananigans in the background?
Okay, I found the solution. It is hidden in Avahi: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Avahi#Hostname_resolution
I stumbled upon it after I compared the contents of files under /etc/ of a fresh Manjaro Install with a naked Arch Install. So yeah, that’s that. Hard to find, easy to fix…
Back to testing broken NVMe sticks - thank you very much for your help! I will later on start with another naked EOS Installation and write down what has to be done to mimick manjaro-printer.
Thought I would chime in (as I was on Manjaro a couple years ago):
I use pamac to view installation packages (just convenient), but I do all my installs\unnstalls\updates via a terminal tool called ‘paru’.
I would suggest using package ‘pamac-aur’ from the AUR if you are going to use pamac. I would not take the risk of updating pamac via pamac. Always from terminal if a bad compile or crash occurs.
The issue is the OP wants to plug in a printer on an Arch based distro and think it should just work. Unfortunately on Arch you have to set it up yourself. Endeavouros doesn’t have everything to work with all different printers. It has the necessary packages installed for cups to allow it to work but requires some setup including installing drivers. If it’s a network printer on wireless then it also needs some settings set which are explained in the wiki.
Avahi provides local hostname resolution using a “hostname.local” naming scheme. To enable it, install the nss-mdns package and start/enableavahi-daemon.service.
Then, edit the file /etc/nsswitch.conf and change the hosts line to include mdns_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] before resolve and dns:
hosts: mymachines mdns_minimal [NOTFOUND=return] resolve [!UNAVAIL=return] files myhostname dns
So, while I was busy to wrap my head around what is avtually going on here I also made some tests in vanilla arch to see what really makes printer magic actually… magic?
Turns out it is working under EOS, but not under Arch. I did a short debug of cups to check what is going on…
Situation: Find printer via network, select printer, select driver, click add. EOS: printer added. Arch: return to settingsdialog under KDE (system-config-printer) without added printer OR giving an internal server error (printer manager or cups native).
The reason for it is the following from cups:
EOS:
POST / HTTP/1.1
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] cupsdSetBusyState: newbusy="Active clients", busy="Not busy"
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] Read: status=200, state=6
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] Authorized as milkytwix using PeerCred.
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] 2.0 Get-Printer-Attributes 10
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] Get-Printer-Attributes ipp://milkytwix@localhost:631/printers/EPSON_WF-4830_Series
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] Returning IPP successful-ok for Get-Printer-Attributes (ipp://shihatsu@localhost:631/printers/EPSON_WF-4830_Serie
s) from localhost.
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] Content-Length: 427
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] cupsdSendHeader: code=200, type="application/ipp", auth_type=0
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] con->http=0x560d82472910
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] cupsdWriteClient error=0, used=0, state=HTTP_STATE_POST_SEND, data_encoding=HTTP_ENCODING_LENGTH, data_remaining=
427, response=0x560d82477860(IPP_STATE_DATA), pipe_pid=0, file=-1
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] Writing IPP response, ipp_state=IPP_STATE_DATA, old wused=0, new wused=0
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] bytes=0, http_state=0, data_remaining=427
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] Flushing write buffer.
D [11/Jul/2023:18:36:26 +0200] [Client 17] New state is HTTP_STATE_WAITING
Arch:
POST / HTTP/1.1
D [11/Jul/2023:19:53:21 +0200] cupsdSetBusyState: newbusy="Active clients and dirty files", busy="Dirty files"
D [11/Jul/2023:19:53:21 +0200] [Client 32] Read: status=200, state=6
D [11/Jul/2023:19:53:21 +0200] [Client 32] No authentication data provided.
D [11/Jul/2023:19:53:21 +0200] [Client 32] 2.0 Get-Printer-Attributes 62
D [11/Jul/2023:19:53:21 +0200] Get-Printer-Attributes ipp://milkytwix@localhost:631/printers/EPSON-WF-4830-Series
D [11/Jul/2023:19:53:21 +0200] Get-Printer-Attributes client-error-not-found: The printer or class does not exist.
D [11/Jul/2023:19:53:21 +0200] [Client 32] Returning IPP client-error-not-found for Get-Printer-Attributes (ipp://milkytwix@localhost:631/printers/EPSON-WF-4830-Series) from localhost.
And cups is then not adding the printer due to no auth information given. And I am wondering what is missing here on Arch that EOS has. Does anyone have deeper insights into cups? Will also ask on the arch forums, but that is a… sepcial place over there.
Might enlighten me why you are not using yay? I always used pacman (under Manjaro) for updates (close everything, log out, log in with shell only, pacman -Syyuw followed by pacman -Syu followed by pamac AUR updates) but came to really like how EOS is doing it via yay - hence my question.
