Getting Lexmark x1270 All-in-one Printer to Work

Well, this is already addressed in the Ubuntu Forums here. The thing is, this blog's one purpose is to be a list of things I keep doing over and over again in every fresh installation so that I don't have to google things over and over again.

I am still working on the scanning part, which might work eventually. I doubt the copying will ever work without a mule load of labour. Copying is done by software in Windows, and I'm not aware of a Linux counterpart yet, nor am I enthusiastic about providing one myself at the moment.

1. Well, download CJLZ600LE-CUPS-1.0-1.TAR.gz.
2. Install alien (to convert rpm's to deb packages) by typing sudo apt-get install alien or choosing alien in whatever package manager you are using.
3. Here you go with the steps to follow (enter these to a shell prompt):

$ mkdir lexmark
$ mv CJLZ600LE-CUPS-1.0-1.TAR.gz lexmark # move the package to a folder. optional, but recommended.
$ tar -xvzf CJLZ600LE-CUPS-1.0-1.TAR.gz # extract the driver.
$ tail -n +143 z600cups-1.0-1.gz.sh > install.tar.gz # the sh script is broken for newer systems. use `tail` to extract the binary portion of the script.
$ tar -xvzf install.tar.gz # extract the contents produced by tail
$ alien -t z600cups-1.0-1.i386.rpm # convert unusable rpm packages to tgz.
$ alien -t z600llpddk-2.0-1.i386.rpm # convert unusable rpm packages to tgz.
$ sudo tar xvzf z600llpddk-2.0.tgz -C / # extract the tgz's to / putting the files in their right place
$ sudo tar xvzf z600cups-1.0.tgz -C / # extract the tgz's to / putting the files in their right place
$ sudo ldconfig # DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP or your printer backend won't find required libraries
$ cd /usr/share/cups/model
$ sudo gunzip Lexmark-Z600-lxz600cj-cups.ppd.gz # unzip the ppd, which should _not_ be gz