What is the best way to share a printer driver RPM I built?

Project Discussion
1

Hi,

I recently needed to install CUPS drivers for Xerox Phaser 3020 printer on an rpm-ostree system. The manufacturer provides the driver as a tar with pre-built binaries and install.sh script that throws files around the system, so it’s not compatible with an immutable distro.

I built an RPM for this driver for personal use and now I’m wondering what is the best way to share it to help others.

At first I thought about Copr, but looks like projects in Copr needs to have a compatible license, which this binary driver doesn’t seem to have.

Next I thought about RPM Fusion, but looks like it’s not suitable for newcomers who don’t have existing status in Fedora and don’t know someone who can sponsor them.

My default would be to put it on GitHub for people to build themselves, but I wondered if there’s a better way to make installation easier for people and keep it up-to-date with new Fedora versions.

What would you recommend?

2

While it is admirable that you want to help others, I suggest you look into the driver’s license terms and the topic of redistribution. Without having checked the terms, I would assume that Xerox grants users a license to use the driver but probably not to redistribute it.

3

You’re right, they don’t grant distribution license.

What is the RPM itself won’t contain the driver but will download, verify hash, and unpack it as part of a post-install scriptlet?

4

The driver name inside the linked archive matches an existing project:
Samsung Unified Linux Driver – Printers & Scanners – negativo17.org

You should consider opening a similar issue:
Add drivers for HP printers · Issue #1 · negativo17/uld · GitHub

5

Hi, any progress on this one? I am trying to get my Xerox Phaser 3020 woking with Fedora 43. So far I’ve managed to get it printing by using Samsung ML-2160 driver. It works but the image is rotated a bit. I’d rather use the driver for Phaser 3020 if possible. Also I checked Xerox site and the driver link for Linux does not work anymore.

6

Hi, for now I made a quick version that worked for me: GitHub - nikital/xerox-phaser-3020: RPMs for Xerox Phaser 3020

7

Thanks for the reply, unfortunately it seems that the download link from Xerox site is broken. I get: 404 Client Error: Not Found for url: https://download.support.xerox.com/pub/drivers/3020/drivers/linux/en_GB/Xerox_Phaser_3020_Linux-Driver.tar.gz
I’ve tried contacting Xerox support but not much luck there. Do you maybe know any other location where I can find the driver?

8

Interestingly it’s still available when I download it from a DigitalOcean server in Frankfurt, maybe it’s a geo-locked resource

# curl https://download.support.xerox.com/pub/drivers/3020/drivers/linux/en_GB/Xerox_Phaser_3020_Linux-Driver.tar.gz | file -
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 6988k  100 6988k    0     0  82.6M      0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 83.2M
/dev/stdin: gzip compressed data, last modified: Tue Apr 22 11:02:18 2014, from Unix

(I also added a source RPM to the pre-built GitHub release if that helps: Release 1.0-1.fc43 · nikital/xerox-phaser-3020 · GitHub )

In any case, it looks like there’s experimental support for Xerox Phaser 3020 in Splix, an open-source driver. Would you like to try it, and report on their issue if it worked? (I’ll also try it later)

9

Blockquote
Interestingly it’s still available when I download it from a DigitalOcean server in Frankfurt, maybe it’s a geo-locked resource

Yes, so it seems. I was able to download it by creating a virtual machine located in Germany.

Blockquote
In any case, it looks like there’s experimental support for Xerox Phaser 3020 in Splix, an open-source driver. Would you like to try it, and report on their issue if it worked? (I’ll also try it later)

I will definitely try it, thanks.