Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

[joneall]

My suggestion is look at the printer driver list in System Settings and work with those. Lexmarks are not Linux friendly. HP and Epson are Linux friendly.

I did that and saw that the HP Deskjet 720C is supported. So I swiped my wife's 720C and installed it first from system settings>printers>add printer and then with CUPS via Firefox at address localhost:631. (Finding that was not obvious.) System settings found a 720C in others, altho it's a parallel-port printer, so I tried that and later on LPT1. CUPS right away found parallel printer HP 720C. So that installation was more satisfying.

The problem is, none of them worked!

When I print a test page or an email, a job goes off to the printer and spends about 5 seconds "Processing..." before getting an error and never printing.

CUPS installs it as a

HP Deskjet 720C Foomatic/pnm2ppa (recommended) (en)

whatever all that may mean. Looking at its settings thru System Settings, I see among other things a GhostScript Rendering Format, but this is not as far as I know a postscript printer. Could that explain the long "Processing..." time? Also, the IPP report in the printer job list says its document-format is apllication/postscript. The job state is 0x6, whatever hexadecimal (or for that matter decimal) 6 may indicate.

Uh, help, please. Thanks in advance.

[SheeEttin]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

What's the error?

[joneall]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

What's the error?

0x6

Is there a file somewhere in Linux which explains the error, like stderr.h or something?

[Snowhog]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

This appears to be a new thread?

Would you describe your setup please? It appears that you have a single printer, which you want to use from two PCs? Home network, which means a router - wired or wireless? What operating systems are on each PC?

[SheeEttin]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

Oh.
Umm... Anything in /var/log/cups/*?

Oh, and Snowhog, the other thread was here. (In general, creating a new thread for a continued problem just creates a lot of threads... Next time, for something like this, keep it in one thread.)

[joneall]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

Sorry about the new thread. It seemed to me that talking about an HP 720C was different from talking about a Dell 720. I am now ttying to use an HP Deskjet 720C connected on a local parallel port.

I tried a new print while in "tail -f /var/log/cups/error.log" and I saw this:

E [24/Nov/2007:11:32:42 +0100] PID 7146 (/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip) stopped with status 3!
E [24/Nov/2007:11:32:52 +0100] [Job 25] Job stopped due to filter errors.
E [24/Nov/2007:21:28:43 +0100] PID 9374 (/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip) stopped with status 3!
E [24/Nov/2007:21:28:53 +0100] [Job 26] Job stopped due to filter errors.

In additon, page_log gave

hp720c jon 26 [24/Nov/2007:21:28:43 +0100] 1 1 - localhost

whereas access_log gives

localhost - - [24/Nov/2007:11:33:09 +0100] "GET /ppd/hp720c.ppd HTTP/1.1" 200 38404 - -
localhost - - [24/Nov/2007:11:33:09 +0100] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 375 Get-Jobs successful-ok
localhost - - [24/Nov/2007:21:28:35 +0100] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 415 CUPS-Get-Classes successful-ok
localhost - - [24/Nov/2007:21:28:36 +0100] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 415 CUPS-Get-Classes successful-ok
localhost - - [24/Nov/2007:21:28:36 +0100] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 415 CUPS-Get-Classes successful-ok
localhost - - [24/Nov/2007:21:28:38 +0100] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 415 CUPS-Get-Classes successful-ok
localhost - - [24/Nov/2007:21:28:39 +0100] "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 415 CUPS-Get-Classes successful-ok
localhost - - [24/Nov/2007:21:28:39 +0100] "POST /printers/hp720c HTTP/1.1" 200 62701 Print-Job successful-ok

What does all this mean? What is a filter error? And what is status 3? Where do I find an explanation of this? Where are the include files that might give me a hint?

And thanks for your continuing help!

[Snowhog]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

Okay. Not a shared printer on a network.

Under K Menu | System Settings | Printers click on Myprinter (or what ever you named it) then click on the Properties tab and Interface. What is reflected for Printer type and URL? Click Driver next. What does Driver info show?

[joneall]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

Okay. Not a shared printer on a network.

Under K Menu | System Settings | Printers click on Myprinter (or what ever you named it) then click on the Properties tab and Interface. What is reflected for Printer type and URL? Click Driver next. What does Driver info show?

Printer properties:

Printer type: Unknown
URI: hp:/par/DESKJET_720C?device=/dev/parport0

(That really is URI, not URL, unless the L is lower case. I have double checked this, since for some reason you can't copy-paste from system settings.)

Driver settings:

Manufacturer: HP
Printer model: Deskjet 720C pnm2ppa
Driver info: HP Deskjet 720C Foomatic/pnm2ppa (Recommended)

I also checked this:

$ ls -l /dev/parport0
crw-rw---- 1 lp scanner 99, 0 2007-11-25 07:30 /dev/parport0

$ id
uid=1000(jon) gid=1000(jon) groups=4(adm),20(dialout),24(cdrom),25(floppy),29( audio),30(dip),44(video),46(plugdev),104(scanner), 108(lpadmin),109(admin),115(netdev),117(powerdev), 1000(jon)

Since I am in the scanner group this wouldn't seem to be a permission problem.

Continuing thanks.

[Snowhog]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

Printer properties:

Printer type: Unknown
URI: hp:/par/DESKJET_720C?device=/dev/parport0

I'm going to guess that this is (at least) part of the problem. If it's connected directly to your PC via the parallel port, then it needs to be identified as such. This would (normally) be done by highlighting the printer name, clicking Properties tab, selecting Interface, and clicking on the Change button. I seem to remember having a problem getting my printer (laser via USB port) setup the first time, and not being able to correct what I had created. I had to delete the printer and create a new entry.

[joneall]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

I have now deleted and redefined the printer several times. Observations:

If I define it as the device on LPT#1 , I have to choose the printer manufacturer and model manually from the lists. When I print a test page on it, nothing ever shows in the printer job viewer, KJobViewer. Also, when I define it as the default printer, the CUPS screen comes right back with "/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip failed". What might this mean, I have no idea. (But someone else has had this error on the Ubuntu forum at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=3795452, without any solution yet.)

Alternatively, in the list of devices, I see "HP DESKJET 720C LPT parport0 HPLIP (HP 720C)" (even tho the HPLIP web site lists the 720C as an unsupported printer). If I define it using this and send a test job, I see the job in KJobViewer. As I said, it stays in "Processing..." for 5-10 seconds, then gets an error.

So I guess I'm back to "Go" again.

On top of everything else, I don't know what I did (Seemed to happen when I was using the mouse wheel to scroll back up the page), but this page is now far too wide for my window. The others are ok, tho. Do you see that too?

[Snowhog]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

It's just a bit dated, and it is written for users of Ubuntu (Gnome desktop), but it can be adapted to KDE.
HOWTO: Install HP Printers for Beginners

[joneall]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

It's just a bit dated, and it is written for users of Ubuntu (Gnome desktop), but it can be adapted to KDE.
HOWTO: Install HP Printers for Beginners

I read that. I tried changing the version to 720 in /etc/pnm2ppa.conf but that had no effect. The HPLIP discussion seems to be beside the point, since the HPLIP page says the 720C is not supported by HPLIP. If I run the HPLIP Toolbox, it agrees, saying the HP 720C is an unsupported printer.

Why the ^&*() does it see the *#$%^&* printer just to tell me it's not supported. This is super frustrating. >

Printer support is still Linux's outstanding weak point, in spite of the progress that is being made.

At any rate, thanks for your time and help.

[linuxwizard]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

Read through this
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ys/+bug/155530

[joneall]

Re: Problem installing HP Deskjet 720C with Gutsy

Read through this
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ys/+bug/155530

Great, linuxwizard! Running "sudo aa-complain cupsd" did the trick.

Thanks to everybody, especially Snowhog, for their assistance.