HP printer wont connect.

[GreyGeek]

I have an HP Laser Jet 1606dn.
I got it around 2012, when I was running Kubuntu 12.04.
I first set it up wirelessly so my wife's WinXP could print. To do that I had to use a USB cable.
It ran fine for several months then the wireless configuration erased itself. Never figured out why, and I couldn't re-enable it, so I used the USB cable. That was about the same time I switched my wife's Acer AO521 to Kubuntu.
When I installed Kubuntu 14.04 the printer automatically configured itself when I plugged the USB cable in, and its been that way for 16.04, 18.04 and now 20.04. IF, in my putzing around I mess up the printer I simply pull the USB cable, delete the printer, and plug the cable back in. The printer automatically configures itself.

When I bought the printer I also bought a box of 10 reams of paper. I have 1 1/2 reams left. I am on my 3rd drum.
It's been an awesome duplex printer and has never jammed or failed to print.

[jglen490]

How so? I don't remember having any issues when I used my Photosmart from 2012 up until early this year. Basic printing, to be sure, nothing fancy, and no photos or anything like that.

It's preference, but when I buy a printer that normally "just works" in Kubuntu, and I upgrade Kubuntu - I would have a reasonable expectation that the features would still "just work". So, "just working" is a roofing hammer, basic function is a tack hammer; three swings with a roofing hammer, the nail is set, three with a tack hammer, there is barely an impression.

Lots of discussion here on Launchpad and maybe some resolution. I look at it after installing 20.04.1.

[claydoh]

Heh, I got lost, thinking we were on a Neon topic and more wondering why Oshunluvr had package conflicts and I did not, with an otherwise working printer

Too many browser tabs, so little time....

[oshunluvr]

Heh, I got lost, thinking we were on a Neon topic and more wondering why Oshunluvr had package conflicts and I did not, with an otherwise working printer

Too many browser tabs, so little time....

PAY ATTENTION!, lol. What, you at work again?

It looks like it hplip not supporting the newer version of python and/or pyqt out-of-the-box but as I said it's working now. I even get the ink levels:

[claydoh]

PAY ATTENTION!, lol. What, you at work again?

Of course. I even have Netflix playing, too.

Sent from my LM-V600 using Tapatalk

[jglen490]

"Homework" has taken on a new meaning the past few months

[claydoh]

"Homework" has taken on a new meaning the past few months

I know, though I have been, um, err, ahh...multitasking for a few years now.
Actually, as I work retail in my other job, I have been working more the past few months. It did drop at the beginning when no one went out at all, but tools are 'essential' and business is actually good. Though that means less time for multitasking lol!

[BubbaBlues]

I upgraded my neon install yesterday and hplip was removed. The printer and scanner both work fine though which is weird. I tried to re-install hplip and the gui but hp-check shows a ton of errors and the "missing" packages don't exist in 20.04 apparently. Probably going to have to wait for hplip to catch up. In any case, I was able to scan and print just fine. HP8720 All-in-one

Well aren't you the lucky one! haha
I'm not sure how my son set it up but it wasn't through the HP gui. I still have the gui but if I open it, it wants me to set up my printer in which case I'd have
to plug it back into the usb. It's now on the other side of the room and printing great wireless. If I start messing around I'll just get it jacked up again and
have to call him back over and he'll get pissed at me. He won't say so, but I'll know. haha However, I have pclos installed on another ssd and for some reason the scanner even works wireless on it. So if I have to use it it's still possible, just not convenient. Hopefully they'll get this stuff worked out in the next few months.

Blues been knockin' on my door!

[jglen490]

Based on the discussions in Launchpad there should be an hplip 3.20.3 (along with a related GUI) in the 20.04 repos, or perhaps 20.04.1. and that is supposed to work well, as long as any hplip installed files from HP are completely removed. There is supposed to also be a later version from HP that should work, but apparently it may be conditional.

All this is speculative on my side, as I have not yet installed the Kubuntu 20.04.1 ISO that I downloaded a couple of days ago. But there seems to be some success, per the Launchpad discussion.

[oshunluvr]

Yes, it's there jglen490. That's what I installed. It's sort of working now but as I said hp-check is not reporting a good installation 1 originally had 15 errors reported. For some reason, the PPDs were also reported as unreadable. I changed the permissions of the ppd files to readable by all and they started working and so did the printer. I also fiddled with the avahi-daemon config because the printer was connected in two different ways (which bugs me) and now the avahi-daemon won't start at all, but hp-systray appeared about that time.

[jglen490]

The PPDs are always setup as unreadable, but I always thought that was an artifact of being owned by lpadmin, which for users would be resolved by being a member of the lpadmin group. Have you tried to manually install the 15 error packages? Doing that has resolved all kinds of problems for me in past installs.

[BubbaBlues]

You can't. Half of them aren't in the repos anymore.

[jglen490]

I'm not speaking for others, but in my experience, running through the list of missing dependencies and manually installing each has resulted in some "not found" errors; but after running apt install on each, the missing dependencies have been resolved.

[GilGib]

I installed hplip-3.20.06 and that fixed the Dependency errors.
Gil

[oshunluvr]

The listed missing depends simply aren't there. It's not a matter of not being able to manually install them. They AREN'T THERE. It's abundantly clear that hplip 3.20.3 is not compatible with 20.04.

Snip from hp-check

<Package-name>      <Required/Optional> <Min-Version> <Installed-Version> <Status>   <Comment>

 error: cups               REQUIRED        1.1             -               INCOMPAT   'CUPS may not be installed or not running'
 error: libjpeg            REQUIRED        -               -               MISSING    'libjpeg needs to be installed'
 error: cups-devel         REQUIRED        -               -               MISSING    'cups-devel needs to be installed'
 error: cups-image         REQUIRED        -               -               MISSING    'cups-image needs to be installed'
 error: libusb             REQUIRED        -               1.0             MISSING    'libusb needs to be installed'
 error: sane-devel         REQUIRED        -               -               MISSING    'sane-devel needs to be installed'
 error: libnetsnmp-devel   REQUIRED        5.0.9           -               MISSING    'libnetsnmp-devel needs to be installed'
 error: libcrypto          REQUIRED        -               1.1.1           MISSING    'libcrypto needs to be installed'
 error: python3-pyqt4-dbus OPTIONAL        4.0             -               MISSING    'python3-pyqt4-dbus needs to be installed'
 error: python3-pyqt4 PyQt REQUIRED        4.0             -               MISSING    'python3-pyqt4 needs to be installed'
 error: python3-devel      REQUIRED        2.2             3.8.2           MISSING    'python3-devel needs to be installed'

Results of trying to install those "missing" items:

[FONT=monospace][COLOR=#000000]Reading package lists... Done[/COLOR]
Building dependency tree        
Reading state information... Done
[COLOR=#FF5454][B]E: [/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]Unable to locate package libjpeg[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#FF5454][B]E: [/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]Unable to locate package cups-devel[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#FF5454][B]E: [/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]Unable to locate package cups-image[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#FF5454][B]E: [/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]Unable to locate package libusb[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#FF5454][B]E: [/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]Unable to locate package sane-devel[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#FF5454][B]E: [/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]Unable to locate package libnetsnmp-devel[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#FF5454][B]E: [/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]Unable to locate package libcrypto[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#FF5454][B]E: [/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]Unable to locate package python3-pyqt4-dbus[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#FF5454][B]E: [/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]Unable to locate package python3-pyqt4[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#FF5454][B]E: [/B][/COLOR][COLOR=#000000]Unable to locate package python3-devel[/COLOR]
[/FONT]

hplip 3.20.3 does not pass hp-check as properly installed. However, once again, hp-systray is working and so is the printer and scanner. The only thing I notice is it takes hp-systray quite some time to load the ink levels or present the setting when you click on those tabs - like a minute.

AFAIK, hplip 3.20.6 is not in the repos so I'll wait, rather than install a foreign binary.

For whatever reason, changing the permissions of the ppd files in /etc/cups/ppd from -rw--r---- to -rw--r--r-- allowed hp-systray to work and the device works fine.