"Obtaining extended ink information requires using a raw device" - escputil

[The Liquidator]

Hi, I've got an Epson DX4400 All in One. Everything works on it, the scanner works (with the Epson drivers) and the printer works with the gutenprint drivers.

The only thing I can't do is monitor the ink level. As it's got 4 cartridges that's a bit of a problem. I have installes escputil and a front-end, stylus toolbox. However, stylus toolbox fails because of read/write issues to /dev/usb/lp0 even when run as root. And whenever I try escputil via the command line I get the error message in the title.

Escputil is stated to work with all Epson printers that work with the Gutenprint drivers so I suspect that if I can only connect to the printer it may work. For further info, the output of lsusb is as follows

Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 003: ID 04b8:083f Seiko Epson Corp. Stylus DX4450
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Any pointers will be most welcome!

Thanks

ian

[oshunluvr]

Re: "Obtaining extended ink information requires using a raw device" - escputil

This looks on topic

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=642524

[Arthur Stennett]

Arthur Stennett, Dell Optiplex 330, Duo Intel 1.6GHz CPU, 4 GBs Ram. Using Epson SX215.
I have had problems in the past with Epson Ink levels. I had Kubuntu 11.04 and was able to use ESCPUTIL on the command line with sudo.
I used "sudo escputil -i -r /dev/usblp0" for the ink level, with great results. I have just done a fresh install of Kubuntu 12.04, and this command no longer works. BUT, I remembered an alternative that did not work for 11.04. I then tried "sudo escputil -i -r /dev/usb/lp0" and it works again with 12.04.
Hope this helps,
Arthur

[woodsmoke]

Arthur,
thank you very much for that post.
woodsmoke

[Arran]

Thanks, Arthur. It helped me too. Does anybody know, it there is a GUI for this, like HP has for their hplip?