13.10 network Epson printer stuck on "Installing"

I opened a terminal and launched system-config-printer, the old configuration interface. I followed the steps until I was presented with 3 driver options for the printer.

system-config-printer dumps data about these drivers to the terminal, in particular the URL for the deb file served by Epson. I manually downloaded and installed the driver.

With the driver pre-installed, the normal configuration process worked perfectly.

For me, the network printer on 13.11 GUI (fresh install) was stuck regardless if I selected the "download driver" (gutenprint) or not. I did sudo apt-get install printer-driver-gutenprint, but it didn't help. A temporary fix: starting

system-config-printer

in the terminal and pressing Ctrl+C when the dialog freezes I was able to get through to the next dialog step, where I could see the manual selection list. The recommended setting (generic printer driver) worked fine.

Those problems were not present in the version 10.04.

Workaround on 15.10: install the driver manually first

# Clean up messy state we were left in.
sudo killall -9 system-config-printer.py
sudo rm /var/cache/debconf/*.dat

# Search for the driver
apt-cache search epson-inkjet-printer | less

The packet description contains the model name. E.g., I have an XP-202, so my package is:

epson-inkjet-printer-201202w - Epson XP-30/102/202/205 Series - Epson Inkjet Printer Driver

The 201202w also shows on the GUI when you get to choose which driver to install.

Now just:

sudo apt-get install epson-inkjet-printer-201202w
system-config-printer

And add the printer normally.

Launchpad bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/system-config-printer/+bug/1307917