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Trouble with printer driver (discuss.tchncs.de)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.world
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Hi,

I just can't get my printer (Dell 3330dn) to work properly under Linux with the generic drivers. That's why I went for a hunt to find the PPD files. The Dell webpage even has a section offering downloads for Linux. But when I unpacked the .zip, there was no PPD file, even when it was stated in the description. Am I blind? Or are the files in a format I don't recognize?

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[–] 5 points 8 months ago (6 children)

So you’ll need 2 commands: rpm2cpio and cpio.

For example:

rpm2cpio mypackage.rpm | cpio -idmv

For reference, I found this by searching for “unpack RPM”. That led me to this NixCraft article. Several other links had similar info.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago (4 children)

    I'm very out of the loop regarding RPM, but doesn't 7zip handle all that in one step? Or never did?

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Not that I've heard of this. This isn't a compressed package in the same way a zip is, it's an application package.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago

    An application package is a compressed file with extra conventions. I think rpm packages are usually compressed with xz, but might use a different compression program. If I'm understanding what I'm reading correctly, rpm2cpio does some introspection to determine with extraction program to use. Maybe 7zip does the same thing, or maybe it works if the rpm was compressed with a compatible program.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    So I tested around and, in fact, 7zip can not immediately decompress rpms. Sorta the same with debs, it decompresses them into an intermediary format which seems to just be a tarfile but still 7zip can't do it "recursively".

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