[RESOLVED] Printer driver issue

[wtb32141]

I recently installed Ubuntu 22.04 on my laptop. Today I printed a document that has an image with a red border. LibreOffice Writer’s print preview showed the red border. My printer is an HP Color Laser Jet Pro M277dw. I’ve had it for 5 years, and I’ve printed many pages with color borders around images, and the red borders always (until today!) printed red. Today the border printed black/gray—not red. I suspect it’s a printer driver problem. I looked at the printer settings that the new operating system provides, but I saw nil about the current printer driver. Per the Synaptic package manager, CUPS and HPLIP are installed on my computer. How do I discover the printer driver that’s in use now?

[claydoh]

You should be able to see the driver version directly from System Settings' printer section:


You can also see this from the 'configure' options' , where you can also see and choose different drivers, of any, for your printer model.:



You might also need to check both the Libreoffice's print settings as well as the printer config in System Settings, just to double check that neither is set to 'monochrome' or 'greyscale' or something.

[wtb32141]

I'm not the only person who has had this problem. For example, see this site: https://askubuntu.com/questions/1410...works-in-color

If I can figure out what those folks are saying, then maybe I can solve my problem.

[claydoh]

The first answer is just going a little further than what my original screenshots show, and making sure the driver isn't by default set to monochrome:


The second response is just a command-line method of doing the exact same thing above using the precise printer name.

The third response is to manually search for and choose a different driver variant for your printer, if you have one available.
You may want to use the exact name shown in your dialogs, I am just guessing here, but it shows a number of different ones to try out, though they all are labelled identically:


The last is using a Snap package, which you can search for using Discover, that is for an external and alternative set of the Cups drivers that this one person found useful. After installing, they went to the url given in their web browser to open a web interface for the printing services: https://localhost:8000/ , set up their printer as new from there, and things worked.



On a side note, for the third response, and my second pic above, you may see that the listings for the different drivers is not very descriptive
An alternative GUI that may show better info is the web interface, similar to mentioned above.
go to https://localhost:631 and look around there, and you can configure the printer from there


However, I didn't see any better descriptions for the same drivers I was looking at - assuming that theses are correct for your printer
This may not be a useful option here for you.


The Snap package with the alternative drivers will look like the above images. A bit clunky, but should be easy enough to navigate.

[Snowhog]

My printer is an HP Color Laser Jet Pro M277dw. I’ve had it for 5 years, and I’ve printed many pages with color borders around images, and the red borders always (until today!) printed red.

Have you checked to see if the color cartridge is depleted?

[wtb32141]

My printer prints; so the computer has some driver that it’s using. I’ve been trying (off and on) for 3 days (without success!) to find out that driver’s name. The closest I’ve come through the printer settings is 4 vertically-arranged rectangles. From top to bottom they are: (1) Name, (2) Location, (3) Address, and (4) Driver. Name’s value is my printer’s name. Location is my computer’s name. Address is a link named “localhost”. Driver shows my printer’s name! Beneath that name come: “Search for drivers”. Beneath that item comes “Select from Database...”. And beneath that item comes “Install ppd file…”. Instead of telling me the driver’s name it tells me my printer’s name! That makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

I’m going to forget this driver/color printing issue for now. Sooner or later I’ll stumble upon the solution. I print very few items that need color printing, but it would be nice to have it when the need arises. More important issues need my attention now, and they don’t require color printing. My 40-chapter book on Einstein has only 3 small pictures. All 3 of them have a red border. With this new operating system (Ubuntu 22.04.1), the borders are visible—but not red! The color cartridges are fairly new, and they have been used very little; so I’m sure they are not empty. I need to start thinking about other things.

Thank you very much for your help!

[claydoh]

You might consider installing the full HPLIP-GUI suite, which might have more utilities and options, it may be easier to find settings and options. hplip itself is mainly just the device drivers.
I keep forgetting about this application.

[jlittle]

My printer prints; so the computer has some driver that it’s using.

Not necessarily. The debian wiki has info about Driverless Printing

[claydoh]

Not necessarily. The debian wiki has info about Driverless Printing

But it is odd that the OP's printer isn't showing the driver used - though I suspect the name of the printer IS the ppd being loaded here, but can't confirm without a screenshot or something from them.
Similar to that other printer thread here, for example
Also note on my screenshot above here, the driver IS shown as the 'driverless' one.

The OP still hasn't mentioned if they have checked the print settings , as I show in pic#1 in post #4, or if any of the other 'duplicate' ppd entries have been tried, to see if they act differently. I don't blame anyone for not trying that one, though. '

Also, we can't rule out a 5 year old printer, even a laser one, needing some sort of cleaning or service.
It is not always the OS

Unless it is Windows, of course

[wtb32141]

Thank you jlittle. I was completely unaware of "driverless printing"! The site <https://openprinting.github.io/printers/> shows my printer (HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw) as capable of driverless printing, and it supports the AirPrint™ standard for driverless printing. I know absolutely nothing about that standard, but I soon will begin reading about it.

[wtb32141]

Part 1: Suppose I have 2 printers, A and B. Printer A has driverless printing capabilities; printer B does not. Ubuntu 22.04’s printer settings presumably will show a driver’s name for printer B (if a driver for it can be found). What will it show for printer A?

Part 2: I have the following 2 HP printers:
Printer 1 is HP Color Laser Jet M277dw ← I bought it on 12-9-2016. So it’s 6 years old.
Printer 2 is HP Laser Jet 1022 ← I don’t know exactly when I bought it, but it was several years before
I bought Printer 1.

The site <https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing/supported_devices/index> says the following about my printers 1 and 2:

Re Printer 1: Min HPLIP Version: 3.15.4
Support level: Full

Re Printer 2: Min HPLIP Version: 2.7.10
Support level: Full (End of support)

Per Synaptic, HPLIP Version 3.21.12 is installed on my computer.

Ubuntu 22.04.1’s printer settings begin with this 4-item menu:
Printer Options
Printer Details
Use printer by default
Remove Printer

When I click on Printer Details, the following 4 items appear:
Name: It shows the printer’s name.
Location: It shows my computer’s name.
Address: It shows local host as a link.
Driver: It lists the name of my printer followed by the following 3 items:
Search for drivers
Select from Database…
Install PPD file…

When I select “Search for drivers”, it searches and then displays this message: “No suitable driver found”. That result occurs for both of my printers. Surely a suitable driver exists somewhere for my HP Color Laser Jet M277dw. So as things stand now, the HP 1022 printer won’t print at all because no driver for it has been found. The HP Color LaserJet M277dw prints but not in color. All that Ubuntu 22.04.1 has told me so far about a driver for that color printer is that “No suitable driver found.”

Any thoughts you may have about this post’s Part 1 and Part 2 will be appreciated.

[wtb32141]

This site <https://support.hp.com/us-en/drivers.../model/7089949> tells me the following:

"Software and drivers for

HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277dw

Choose a different product
Detected operating system: Linux Choose a different OS"

It detected my operating system to be Linux, and it then says, "Choose a different OS." My conclusion is: The HP site has no Linux driver for my HP Color LaserJet Pro M277dw printer! Presumably it has Windows drivers for my printer but no Linux (Ubuntu 22.04.1) driver for my printer. So the printer's scanner function is gone; the color function is gone, etc. I should have chosen the dual boot option when I installed Ubuntu 22.04.1. My printer worked perfectly under Ubuntu 16.04!!! Here is one of the downsides of updating one's OS. The new version of Ubuntu also lacks the Dingbats font, which was on Ubuntu 16.04, and I used that font in writing several of the books I've written. Yes, I can buy the font and install it, but if Ubuntu 16.04 still were available to me, I would not have to spend the time and money reacquiring that font. Updating from Ubuntu 16.04 to 22.04 has been an unpleasant and costly experience for me.

[jlittle]

My conclusion is: The HP site has no Linux driver for my HP Color LaserJet Pro M277dw printer!

HPLIP is used instead of downloading a driver. In the monster list of more than 3,000 supported printers, there is a listing for "HP Color LaserJet MFP m277dw", lacking the "Pro", but that seems pretty close. In the list of explicitly unsupported printers, there's only 3 color laserjets, all "1500" something "Printer", not much like yours.

In the release notes for HPLIP, it says Ubuntu 22.04 is supported by HPLIP 3.22.6, which is the version in my 22.04 (I don't know why, I rage tossed my last HP printer when it jammed irreparably after buying lots of ink). If you've got something before 3.22.6, maybe try installing the latest version in the repos.

[claydoh]

In 22.04

$ apt policy hplip
hplip:
Installed: 3.21.12+dfsg0-1
Candidate: 3.21.12+dfsg0-1
Version table:

https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-i..._devices/index
tghis shows the printer has support since version 3.15.4, so this should not be an issue.

However, hplip is just for the driver packs, the gui printer config tools and utils are not installed by default -- hplip-gui - which can be useful set of tools, is not installed by defualt, though I myself never really used them when I had HP printers. They might be useful in general.

other things to do, if they haven't been done, just to eliminate obvious issues:

• can you print a test page from the printer directly - NOT from a computer? This takes the driver out of the picture. If it prints in color here......
• can you print a test page from the printer config in System Settings -- does this print in color?
• Have the print settings in BOTH LibreOffice's print settings AND the printer settings been double checked that they are not set to monochrome or greyscale? LO has its own configurations for this

Just some things to help eliminate hardware problems as well as Libreoffice being a culprit.

[wtb32141]

Well folks, I have some good news. The pictures with the red borders now print RED!!! The problem was in Writer. I first got the printer to print a test page without being connected to the computer. The test page showed vivid colors. Then I connected the computer to the printer, and I printed another test page. It too looked super (bright colors). Then I printed a page with Writer. That page has a picture with a border. The border printed gray. I knew then the problem was in Writer. I again hit "Print", and this time I clicked on "Properties". The next screen shows "Paper" and "Device". I clicked on "Device", and the first item in the list says, "Print Color as Gray". It was turned "ON"; so I switched it to "Off", and the problem was solved.

Thank you very much to everyone who tried to help me solve this problem. I learned quite a bit about printers, but I have MUCH more to learn. What a great invention the internet is! Without it, there would be no on-line forums like this one that enables folks from all over the world to help each other solve problems and learn!