We got a new Kyocera printer at work a few days ago. The model we’re trying out is an “EP510DN“. We had a heck of a time finding information for this printer on the Kyocera web site. In desperation, we called their sales/support people who informed us that a Kyocera “EPwhatever” is an EcoPro unit, all of which show up on the KyoceraEcoPro domain. (Personally, seems like having completely different domain names for the same company is a good way to dilute your brand.) As soon as I added “EcoPro” to my Google query, I got meaningful results on the first page.
We are setting this up on a FreeBSD print server. We had DHCP and DNS configured and tested, so we created a printcap(5) entry for the printer, and got… errors (from the /var/log/lpd-errs log file):
lpd[32955]: /dev/lp: No such file or directory
After much head-banging, I finally figured out the problem–there was some whitespace at the end of one of the lines in the printcap. Doh!
Some other notes and information about this printer:
- Web-based configuration doesn’t support https:// protocol.
- The configuration username is “admin”. Default password is “”. Get IP configured on the printer, pull up the web interface, and change it–ASAP! (Ideally you would set the password on a private network, before putting it on the Internets. Not that it’ll do you much good–see previous note.) I’ve seen a pretty gnarly security exploit for Kyocera printers, which seems to bypass what little security is available, but I haven’t tested it on our unit yet.
- The printer supports Bonjour protocol, although it doesn’t seem to be a “real” PostScript printer. (My Mac sees it as a “Generic PostScript” device.)
- The EP510DN PPD file is available for *nix operating systems. I’m still looking for a Mac driver for this printer.
I don’t know if we’ll keep this printer or send it back. The print speed is definitely nice, and print quality seems alright. I’m a bit disturbed about all the network services that this printer provides, without securing them in any meaningful way. I’ll try out the cracking suggestion above and see if this model is vulnerable.
