Driver for Epson LP-5500 series missing

It is possible that the LP-M5500 is not compatible with the LP-M5000 so that the driver does not cover this printer. Please have a look at http://avasys.jp/eng/linux_driver/ to see whether there is a suitable driver for your printer.

In addition, please also supply an error_log as described under "CUPS error_log" on https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems.

I did not see a suitable driver at http://avasys.jp/eng/linux_driver/

I actually could not find an error in any of the logs. I had looked at that link when submitting the bug. It seems that Ubuntu thinks that the page is printed successfully. The printer even warms up. Just nothing prints out.

Can you print a configuration test page of the printer? This often shows which languages it supports. Perhaps it knows PCL or even PostScript.If these languages are not supported by your printer, you are out of luck and your printer is not supported under Linux.

Please see attached configuration tst page. I attached as a pdf and as two jpg files (for each of the two pages).
It does not appear to show which languages that it supports. However, I am pretty sure it supports PCL and PostScript. This is a common combination office color printer / copier / scanner / fax machine in companies in Japan. They sell for about $5,000. I would guess that Epson sells the same machine overseas as well given that its menu can be selected as English or Japanese.

They don't seem to list the languages on their spec page either:
http://www.epson.jp/products/back/hyou/printer/lpm5500.htm

This shows a list of OS support and a small picture of the machine:
http://www.epson.jp/dl_soft/list/1767.htm

Also, it should be somewhat similar to the LP-M5000 series which has a driver in Linux. (Though, of course that driver does not work for the LP-M5500 series so there is some kind of a change.

List of manuals in Japanese with a larger picture of the scanner and printer components:
http://www.epson.jp/support/manual/color/lpm5500.htm

Thanks

I found that rpm files exist for Turbo/RedHat/Fedora and for SuSE/Mandrake. I read a Japanese bbs that mentioned that the Turbo/RedHat/Fedora one is what should be used to make the .deb file. However, Alien is unable to create a .deb file. Possibly because the rpms are for i386 and I am using ubuntu amd 64-bit.
The site where I downloaded the files is at: http://www.avasys.jp/lx-bin2/linux/mfp/DL1.do
(It is a form, where the printer (LP-M5500) and environment (optional drop-downs) are used to go to the printer download page.)
The site is in Japanese. I have attached the files on the download page. The readme files are all in Japanese but I named the files with English translations of what each file is.

Can you use these rpms as a means to create the needed files to support this in Ubuntu (cups, etc.)? I would be greatly appreciated. (By the way, there are .deb files for the iscan which I believe is for using the scanner features of the M5500 machine.)

The output from running Alien was as follows:
# alien -d --scripts Epson-LPM5500-filter-1.1-0.i386-CUPS-CorePackage-Turbo,RedHat,Fedora.rpm
error: incorrect format: unknown tag
Package build failed. Here's the log:
dh_testdir
dh_testdir
dh_testroot
dh_clean -k -d
dh_clean: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
dh_installdirs
dh_installdirs: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
dh_installdocs
dh_installdocs: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
dh_installchangelogs
dh_installchangelogs: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
find . -maxdepth 1 -mindepth 1 -not -name debian -print0 | \
  xargs -0 -r -i cp -a {} debian/epson-lpm5500-filter
dh_compress
dh_compress: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
dh_makeshlibs
dh_makeshlibs: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
dh_installdeb
dh_installdeb: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
dh_shlibdeps
dh_shlibdeps: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
dpkg-shlibdeps: error: couldn't find library libstdc++.so.5 needed by debian/epson-lpm5500-filter/usr/bin/lpm5500 (ELF format: 'elf32-i386'; RPATH: '').
Note: libraries are not searched in other binary packages that do not have any shlibs or symbols file.
To help dpkg-shlibdeps find private libraries, you might need to set LD_LIBRARY_PATH.
dh_shlibdeps: dpkg-shlibdeps -Tdebian/epson-lpm5500-filter.substvars debian/epson-lpm5500-filter/usr/bin/lpm5500 returned exit code 2
make: [binary-arch] Error 9 (Ignored)
dh_gencontrol
dh_gencontrol: Compatibility levels before 5 are deprecated.
dpkg-gencontrol: error: current host architecture 'amd64' does not appear in package's architecture list (i386)
dh_gencontrol: dpkg-gencontrol -ldebian/changelog -Tdebian/epson-lpm5500-filter.substvars -Pdebian/epson-lpm5500-filter returned exit code 255
make: *** [binary-arch] Error 9
find: `Epson-LPM5500-filter-1.1': No such file or directory

After I ran the above command, the following directory was created: Epson-LPM5500-filter-1.1
There are 3 subdirectories in that directory:
ls Epson-LPM5500-filter-1.1
debian etc usr

There are some Japanese-market-only printers with firmware especially made for the demands of the Japanese language. These do not support PostScript or PCL but use a proprietary printer language. Probably your printer is such a device and the LP-M5000 is perhaps the same hardware but with a firmware for the US and Europe. So you will need the manufacturer-supplied driver.

The problem you encounter with it is that you are on a 64-bit system and the driver -s 32-bit. Check whether you can download a 64-bit driver and use that one. If there is none, try to install the "ia32-libs" package which provides 32-bit binaries of the most important libraries. See also the possibilities for architecture overrides in the dpkg and dpkg-buildpackage utilities.

As a last mean you could set up a virtual machine running a Ubuntu Server Edition set up as a print server and install the 32-bit driver there.

Turning into a question as this is not a bug. It is simply a piece of hardware which is not supported by our distribution and support cannot be added as no free software driver is available.

Perhaps this wiki page and forum tread for a similar printer can help you to install the avasys driver for your Epson LP-M5500: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EpsonAcuLaserC110064bit
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=915669

Good luck!