I just broke my printer driver

Hello,
Unfortunately I am in despair. I’ve been fiddling with my driver for days and now it’s finally broken.
So that you know what’s going on, here’s the story from the beginning.
I installed the driver for my Epson 2530WF in November 2023 using yay

yay -S epson-inkjet-printer-201211w

It then worked for almost two years without any problems, but then there was an update and it no longer worked. It’s the same error that I’m now getting again with yay, which says :

AUR Explicit (1): epson-inkjet-printer-201211w-1.0.1-1
AUR Dependency (1): epson-inkjet-printer-filter-1.0.2-6
:: PKGBUILD is up to date, skip Download: epson-inkjet-printer-filter
:: (0/1) Failed to update PKGBUILD: epson-inkjet-printer-201211w
-> Error retrieving epson-inkjet-printer-201211w: Fatal: No Git repository (or any parent directory up to mount point /)
Stop at file system boundary (GIT_DISCOVERY_ACROSS_FILESYSTEM not set).
context: exit status 128

As a result, I did things that I never do, because I didn’t know how else to help myself, I just tried to solve the problem somehow.
I went to ArchAUR-Repository and searched for the page for the driver and found it here.
This is the page with my printer and I downloaded the sources, then I unpacked it with Dolphin and even found the 1.0.2 which I then configured without AUR-Helper with

./configure --prefix=/usr/local

built with

make

and installed it with

sudo make install

The new driver was not recognised and yay still spit out the error, but my printer printed, so half as bad.

Then I visited the Epson site and was able to find my driver. It was also available as an rpm file. I unpacked it and found only a raw folder structure, without configure, make, etc.

I then copied it into my directories and was finally able to select 1.0.1 with CUPS. Previously had the 1.0.0. Printer also printed but the error message from yay was still there. Because of this I sat down and wrote my own PKGBUILD, because according to yay it could not update itself. The PKGBUILD is ready, but I haven’t tried it yet.

Today I wanted to eliminate all problems with the aur driver by simply removing it, since I had also printed with CUPS with the manually installed driver, as it looked. The uninstallation went smoothly. Unfortunately, my printing has not worked since then. No more test page, no more nothing. The printer is in CUPS as before, but it no longer twitches.
Then I just wanted to put the AUR driver back on with

yay -S epson-inkjet-printer-201211w

but it doesn’t work, I get the error message from above. Now I also have the driver /opt/epson-inkjet-printer-201211w/ in /opt/ but it doesn’t print. I still have a Sanpshopt from a week ago, but is there any other way to solve the problem?
I mean you can see the PKGBUILD which is online, I mean the one from Vitalii Kuzhdin
There is also a filter driver
Does anyone have any idea what’s going on ?
I want to print again ? I am so sad now

Not me, no.
But:
I just did what you say you did:
yay -S epson-inkjet-printer-201211w

and there was no problem whatsoever - builds and installs flawlessly :man_shrugging:

I suggest you try again, after clearing out the yay cache, to start with a clean slate.

rm -rf ~/.cache/yay

There may have been a temporary problem with the site where the files are hosted.



re your “manual” compilation and installation:

you should be able to uninstall it:
sudo make uninstall
or look at the makefile to see what keyword is used to achieve that

There should also be an install log where you can see what was copied to which location during installation - you can then remove that manually.

Thanks for your help,
i just had to clean the clean, never did it before. Now i could install the driver again without any issue. My printer is printing again.

It has nothing to do with the printing topic, but a new message after erasing cache appears, when enter yay :

-> Pakete nicht im AUR: lib32-libva-vdpau-driver  manjaro-hotfixes  manjaro-settings-manager-kcm  plasma-simplemenu  systemd-kcm

Is this bad, what’s going on here ?

No.

I’m not sure - perhaps these packages where installed from AUR once, but are not available anymore.
Just look up the names and see whether you even need them.

If they are available from standard Manjaro repository - use these instead of those from AUR.

If in doubt: remove them -
or try to and see what will be removed along with them and then decide

These would appear to all be old packages that once existed in the repos.
If such packages begin returning “Not found in AUR” from a pacman-frontend+aur-helper then that means those packages do not exist in either the repos or the AUR and should likely be removed.

Being familiar with all of these packages I can assure you they were in the repos once, are not any longer, and should definitely be removed.

This also makes me wonder about other packages you may have retained that still have counterparts in the AUR that should not be installed either.

(These happen to be showing in an obvious way because they do not exist at all.)

You might return the list of foreign packages with

pacman -Qmq
2 Likes

I did some researches and can tell when the packages came to my system:
it’s not that important, but maybe interesting to know:

  • lib32-libva-vdpau-driver
    installed on 10th October 2024 during a systemupdate
  • manjaro-hotfixes
    installed on 28th January 2024 during a systemupdate
  • manjaro-settings-manager-kcm
    installed on 14th January 2024 during a systemupdate
  • plasma-simplemenu
    installed on 19th September 2023 !? Huh? This can’t be, i installed my Manjaro on 2nd October 2023.
  • systemd-kcm
    installed on 7th November 2023 during a systemupdate

pamac list -m shows even better infos

chromaprint-fftw             1.5.1-2                      72,7 KB
epson-inkjet-printer-201211w 1.0.1-1                      4,2 MB
epson-inkjet-printer-filter  1.0.2-6                      393,3 KB
lib32-libva-vdpau-driver     0.7.4-8                      83,4 KB
manjaro-hotfixes             2024.1-2
manjaro-settings-manager-kcm 0.5.7-21                     5,8 MB
mpv-full-build-git           0.39.0.r565.g50042f5ee0-1    66,9 MB
ocs-url                      3.1.0-7                      137,5 KB
password-gorilla             1.5.3.7-7                    3,8 MB
plasma-simplemenu            1.0.12-1                     82,4 KB
pulseaudio-ctl               1.70-2                       15,3 KB
spectre-meltdown-checker     0.46+23+g0f2edb1-1           294,6 KB
systemd-kcm                  1.2.1-8                      694,0 KB
trizen                       1:1.68-1                     130,8 KB
ttf-ms-fonts                 2.0-12                       5,7 MB
upd72020x-fw                 1:1.0.0-2                    46,0 KB

All of the packages are also listed here.
New for me is the fact that AUR packages are installed with the systemupdate, I did not know that, but it is probably the case that the packages are moved to the AUR afterwards and you will also notice this if you delete your cache regularly.

That is normally not the case - just when you use pamac with AUR support enabled
and/or yay, which also deals with both the regular repos and AUR as well.

Use pacman
or pamac with AUR support disabled
and only use yay or pamac with AUR support when you actually need it,
when you consciously decide to have to use this or that package from AUR.

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By “Installed during system update” are you not sure you dont mean upgraded?
Or possibly the new AUR source is first installed on that date?

I could have gotten ‘more info’ from any various methods.
pacman -Qmq was used on purpose to more easily copy/paste the contents. Oh well.

It would appear the ones mentioned are the main things that would stand out as needing to be removed. The rest are up to you - maybe you have a reason to have spectre-meltdown-checker and password-gorilla.

It will happen if you use anything with AUR support - such as pamac or yay.
Most people notice a move out of the repos right away. Its an oddity you are only finding out later, after removing cache.

That’s a good point. But you should know, i never activated AUR for my pamac, i cannot even clearly say if i used pamac or yay for systemupdate. I must admit i used yay for systemupdate to before i changed my mind and began to use only pamac without AUR support. I even don’t use pacman.

I use password-gorilla everyday, but i don’t even know what spectre-meltdown-checker is. It was installed on 14th January 2024 during a systemupdate, maybe i used yay.

Those two packages were chosen at random from the list of foreign packages that were not already cited in the ‘not in the aur’ message.

The ones spit out as not existing in the repos or the AUR should be removed.

Everything else foreign is up to you … all of them can be removed or kept as you see fit.

I use pipewire so that pulseaudio-ctl package would be an obvious removal.
In fact I dont see a single thing on there I want, so I would remove all of them.
But I am not you.

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