HP LaserJet 1018 doesn't work.

[dotmon]

HI,

I am not so advanced Kubuntu user and need your help.
I cannot start the printer (HP LJ 1018 ).
Kubuntu 12.04 gives me the message that it is ready to print, but it doesn't work when I will print a test page.
So I went through all the steps, described in the posting av vitux, 11-03-06 08:44 AM. The result was a hanging printing job with the message "missing cups filter" or something like that.

I tried to install a couple of times HPLIP-3.12.9. It went OK until the moment when it should find and install the necessary plugin. Then it hang all the times and I needed to close the program.

Any help? Do you know where can I download from and how can I install manually the appropriate HP proprietary plugin?

Thanks in advance.

Dotmon

[Qqmike]

I believe you should already have hplip installed. (Open Muon and search for hplip and see that it is there.) Open hplip (if you can't find it, you may need to install hplip-gui or something like that--the graphical front end to hplip, it will also be listed in Muon Package Manager; or open Konsole and type hplip and hit enter and see if it opens). After opening hplip, click the tabs/buttons for installing a new printer. I believe it 'should' then give you driver choices or help you find one.

[Frank616]

Dotmon:

Yeah, it IS a pain getting that USB printer to work. I have an LJ1020 (very similar), and it took me several tries to get the HP software to work with it, and it still give me error messages when I first plug the printer in. However, my 1020 does work, and it works well.

The issue is that the printer has no firmware. It is brain dead. Each time you use the printer, the printer's brain has to be programmed. That is whey when you do get the printer going, it will start up twice. Once when you turn it on, and once when the HP software programs the printer after the info is sent over the USB link.

It is a good idea in many ways, as you are assured of getting the latest 'firmware' every time you start the printer up. It is bad in that the firmware is proprietary, and is only supplied by HP-- which is why you have to use their driver.

There are detailed instructions on the HP site. If the previous suggestion does not work for you, I'll try to direct you through the HP site. The previous suggestion -- if it works -- is much simpler for the novice.

Frank.

[dotmon]

Thanks, Frank,

I give up!

It'll be nice of you ti say where I can find the information on HP site.

Thanks in advance

[dotmon]

Qqmike,
HP-Toolbox is there, but I get the message "KDEInit could not launch '/usr/bin/hp-toolbox'" when I try to start it.

[Qqmike]

I wonder if it might go if you uninstall hplip (using Muon), then re-install it (along with the hplip-gui front end).

[pauly]

I just wanted to mention that I have an epson stylus nx420 network printer. Epson is great with linux. They provided on their website a deb package to install their driver both 64 bit and 32 bit. I did have to do a little research on ports to get the printer/scanner to work over the network through the firewall, but it works great. I have had a great experience with epson.

[Qqmike]

pauly--similarly for hp, whose Linux support has been pretty good this past 5-8 years or so.

[Frank616]

dotmon:

It'll be nice of you ti say where I can find the information on HP site.

I'm pretty sure this is it.

I am away from home at the moment, so I don't have access to my HP 1020 printer to follow this through. However, I did go through the menus far enough to determine that your printer is covered in the list of those available. When choosing a distro, select Ubuntu, and then the version you are running.

IIRC, HPLIP from the Kubuntu repository does not work for my 1020 (same problems as you have had), and probably not for your 1018 either. To make the printer work you have to have the proprietary 'brains' (firmware) to download to your printer, and AFAIK, that is only available from HP. My understanding is that Canonical cannot put it in the repository because of copyright laws.

Installing HPLIP from the site linked above requires you to use the command line. Are you comfortable with that? The installation is pretty much automated. It is only at the end that it asks a question to which the answer is not obvious. If you get to that point and you are not sure, again IIRC, if you reboot at that point, you do no harm. The installation will pick up again where it left off when you start up again.

The installation will tell you when to plug your printer in to the USB port, and when not to. Follow that, and it should work. When my install completed successfully, I got an HP icon in the system tray (kicker) that links to the installed HPLIP print utility.

I'll be home on Monday night, and should be able to do more then to help you out if needed.

Frank.

[dotmon]

Hi Frank,

I did this 2 times. The hp-setup GUI appeared, discovered the printer and when going to the next step - to download the plugin it hanged. I must close it with the X. Afterwords when I tried to install the plugin from the manager (the icon you mentioned) it happened again. I tried also to get a firmware, but it didn't work. So I uninstalled the latest version of HPLIP - according to the instructions in HPLIP site and from the command line.

What is really irritating is that hplip-3.12.6 worked OK with Kubuntu 10.04. When I upgraded it - the sofware hangs. At the same time on another PC I have Ubuntu 12.04. It detected the printer and installed the necessary plugins smooth - LJ 1028 works with it

Please, specify what time (GMT) on Monday you'll be at home - we may live in different time zones.

dotmon

[Frank616]

dotmon:

What is really irritating is that hplip-3.12.6 worked OK with Kubuntu 10.04. When I upgraded it - the sofware hangs. At the same time on another PC I have Ubuntu 12.04. It detected the printer and installed the necessary plugins smooth - LJ 1028 works with it

Oh. There may be bigger issues here then.

Mine 'hung' part way through the installation too, but when I rebooted, it picked up where it left off. I am using version 3.12.4 on Kubuntu 11.10 on this Dell M6600 laptop. Upgrading to 12.04 was to be my 'winter works' project as I am planning a fresh install this time.

If you have already been successful in installing the driver for the LJ1018 on another machine (I assume that LJ1028 was a typo), then I may not have a lot to share with you. However, I am in Mountain Time in North America, which is GMT -7 I think, or maybe -6 as we are now on daylight saving time. I should be around after about 6 PM local time on Monday.

I do have another older machine that I can use to try to load the current driver from scratch, but it is at home too.

Frank.

[dotmon]

Hi Frank,

I am sorry not beeng online on Monday, but then I was too tired.
Thanks for willing to help me anyway.
I solved the problem tonight, using the posting of gymador as starting point:
http://askubuntu.com/questions/37126...e-i-plug-it-in
But first I uninstalled one more time HPLIP using the command line.
The difference is that Kubuntu didn't discover the printer. I added it manually and chose the foomatic driver . I works now.

So the problem is solved.

Dotmon

[Frank616]

Dotmon:

I am sorry not beeng online on Monday, but then I was too tired.

You and me both. I thought I was going to have to apologize to you. Jet lag and a busy week has taken its toll. I'm just now getting caught up on some of my 'extra' projects.

Anyway, glad you got it going. I'm now going to have to go through the process again over the holidays as I think I am going to do a full, fresh install of 12.04 on this laptop.

Frank.

[jglen490]

@dotmon --

i have been using HP printers and the hplip package for a few years now. While typically the LaserJets have been supported not as well as the inket printers, HP has been doing better. You talk about version 3.12.9 and 3.12.6 and that may be a problem with Kubuntu 12.04 LTS. I looked at the version on my machine:

john@john-laptop:/dev$ dpkg -l hplip
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                   Version                Description
+++-======================-======================-============================================================
ii  hplip                  3.12.2-1ubuntu3.1      HP Linux Printing and Imaging System (HPLIP)
john@john-laptop:/dev$

I don't know for sure, but there could be a problem with how a later version of hplip acts with the current Precise Pangolin version of cups. That's what hplip does - it provides the drivers that cups needs to work with your printer. I would strongly recommend uninstalling your present version and letting apt-get, or your favorite gui package manager get the "normal" version for Precise Pangolin. Newer isn't always better.