Mint update fails after installing Canon printer drivers

Question

I am using linux Mint 17.2 "Rafaela". Today I installed drivers for the Canon iP2700 series. The deb debivers package was based on the libtiff4 package, but the system uses "libtiff5", so I forced it with

sudo dpkg --force-depends -i cnijfilter-* 

It worked: the printer works fine, but the mint update does not update, it says that the cnijfilter-ip2700series package will be removed. Of course I don’t want to shoot it. What should I do?

One more thing : if I do

 sudo apt-get dist-upgrade 

I get something like (I translated from Spanish) "cnijfilter-ip2700series has unresolved dependencies: Depends: libtiff4 but cannot be installed. Try using the -f option

and if i do

 sudo apt-get -f dist-upgrade 

he says: "cnijfilter-ip2700series will be deleted"

In any case, I prefer to use the mint update, since apt-get seems to violate the system settings, so I would prefer a solution based on the mint update.

Answer 1

The system believes that your cnijfilter installation is broken because it has a missing dependency. Since this is unsatisfactory, offering to remove the package is actually a pretty good solution.

You have several options:

• It looks like you can download the driver source code and compile it .

• An easier solution is to download and install the libtiff4 package from Ubuntu or Debian . Both versions of the package must be installed on your system (without invalid dependencies). This is what I did on my (also mint, also with these Cancon drivers).

• You can fix the dependency from the package to think that everything is in order. Of course, applications in the package that rely on libtiff4 will be broken, but the actual driver ( /usr/lib/cups/backend/cnijusb ) is not one of them. Patching is pretty simple:

   # Unpack the deb package: $ ar x cnijfilter-..._amd64.deb # This will create 3 files: data.tar.gz, control.tar.gz and debian-binary # Unpack control.tar.gz: $ mkdir DEBIAN $ cd DEBIAN $ tar xzf ../control.tar.gz # Edit the newly created control file: $ your_favorite_editor control # now, in the editor, remove the libtiff4 dependency from the Depends line # Repack everything into a new deb file: $ rm ../control.tar.gz $ tar czf ../control.tar.gz * $ cd .. $ ar r cnijfilter-..._amd64.deb contol.tar.gz 

  Subsequently, your updated deb file no longer has libtiff4 as a dependency. Let apt remove the installed version so that it no longer complains, and then install the newly created package.