HP Printer Defaults to Grayscale

[royleith]

Before you leap to conclusions, a lot has happened, so far:

Purged and reinstalled cups several times
Purged and reinstalled HPLIP several times
Installed all appropriate cups related drivers
Installed the latest HP release of HPLIP and selected their new PPD

Symptoms

KDE Printer Manager reports that Print Grayscale is 'OFF', but prints test page in grayscale
HP Device Manager allows setting to Color, but reverts to Grayscale on refresh and prints test page in grayscale
http://localhost:631/printers/HP_CP3505 reports

HP Color LaserJet cp3505 pcl3, hpcups 3.21.12 (color, 2-sided printing)

Output Mode Color

and prints the test page in grayscale

/var/log/cups/error_log reports,

CreateProfile failed: org.freedesktop.ColorManager.AlreadyExists Profile id \'HP_CP3505-Gray..\' already exists
CreateProfile failed: org.freedesktop.ColorManager.AlreadyExists Profile id \'HP_CP3505-RGB..\' already exists

With the KDE recomended driver I got the following error_log report,

Printer drivers are deprecated and will stop working in a future version of CUPS. See https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cups/issues/103

That website says that HPLIP overcomes that issue, which is why I installed HP's latest version. This error report no longer appears.

I won't bore you with the many rabbit-holes I have explored, but I wonder if the failure to create the two profiles has something to do with it and that the printer is falling back on its internal Output Mode setting and returning it to http://localhost:631/printers/HP_CP3505.

Any thoughts?

[kc1di]

The error message say that those files already exist so it won't over write them. So I'm thinking that that may be the issue that the files that exist are not the right ones for your printer.
Have you tried deleting all hp drivers and files and starting over? I would also install hplip-gui and install my printer via that. See if it makes any difference.

[royleith]

I tried one (more!) last time. I deleted the printer, added a new printer and selected HP Color Laserjet CP3505dn - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.3.3 in the KDE System Settings/Printer. I found yet another options menu I set 2-sided printer to ON. The Color Model defaulted to RGB. I was expecting CMYK.

A test print printed in colour! The only problem is that 2-sided printing keeps resetting to OFF. I will try printing from LibreOffice and see if it can force 2-sided printing.

I am still getting the error report:

W [24/Sep/2022:06:44:43 +0100] Printer drivers are deprecated and will stop working in a future version of CUPS. See https://github.com/OpenPrinting/cups/issues/103

[kc1di]

What is the Model of the printer? if you posted that I missed it. If the drivers are depreciated that means going forward you will have to be thinking about a newer printer.

[claydoh]

Just a thought, but does the printer have a physical control panel with a print test page option, or similar option, directly from the printer (no driver involved)?
In general, purging and reinstalling things is just a time-sapper in Linux, 99% of the time, especially with drivers and hardware.

Also, do you also have hpijs, openprint, or other driver options as well as hpcups or gutenprint ones? One may work better than the others.

heck, as it is a network printer, I wonder it it will work better connected over the lan, maybe? Just stabbing at random shadows, tbh.