hplip hosed yet again after recent updates - 05-July-2009

[growbag]

If anyone else is having problems with their HP Photosmart (c4580) multifunction after the latest updates, here's what I did to get mine working once again -

1. Uninstalled hplip (ALL versions including standard AND packman), this also automatically uninstalls hplip-hpcups (which seems to be the cause of the problems) and automatically re-instates hplip-hpijs instead.

2. Remove all installed printers in Yast and also check on http://localhost:631 to make sure they are all removed.

3. If you have (as I did) lots of annoying test pages spooled and waiting to be printed, reboot now to (hopefully) get rid of them.

4. Disable your firewall (through yast) and add allowed service - cups. You might want to restart it, but to save time/frustrations/headaches/smashing your computer and printer out of frustration I would leave it disabled until you have successfully achieved a test page printout!

5. Download hplip-3.9.6b.run from here - HP Linux Imaging and Printing and follow the install instructions. It should eventually bring up the GUI interface where you can detect your printer.

5a. If it doesn't find your printer in the scan, then you are most likely going to have problems. Make sure your firewall is disabled/allowed and that the printer is actually reachable (ie by ping or the web interface). If still not reachable, then you need to find out your printer's IP address and enter that in a browser and get it's hostname.

Here is an example of mine -



The hostname is at the top left of the page, ie HPAF3FC3 in my case. Incidentally you can enter that into your browser - http://HPAF3FC3, which saves you having to enter the IP number.

6. All should now be ok, try a test print.

7. If still not working, all I can suggest is to play around uninstalling/re-installing all the cups and HP stuff until you find the right combination . For me (I believe) the problem was the updated packman version of hplip because it now demands the hplip-hpcups package which seems to be the root of the problem. Installing (and auto-compiling) the version from hplipopensource.com avoids having to install it, and you can still use the old hplip-hpijs.

Good luck!
** *

[hcvv]

I can confirm problems with the Packman version of hplip (wich introduces hplip-hpcups). The first version of it on Packman contained a HAL config file that frustrated HAL, so it would not mount any removables: HAL does not mount removables anymore - openSUSE Forums the second (newest) version on Packman did remove this HAL config file again.

But both Packman versions gave independancies with ghost-lib. So I reverted to the OSS hplip.

[growbag]

I really need to wean myself off doing updates! It's a bad habit .

[Sagemta]

Sometimes they work sometimes they don't.
I had the same problem & fixed it too.

[jonb62]

Well I tried the above process and I am still hosed with my PSC 2175 all-in-one printer.

Symptoms:
1. printing a straghtforward A4 page scales it by 50% (quarter area).
2. Using filters from kprinter for things like pamphlet printing produces a *really* tiny page and lots of lines.

Setting the print quality to draft as per https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/392040
solves (1) above, but not (2).

Does anyone know how to resolve this?
In the meantime, I will attempt to go back to the installation DVD and re-install the original hplip stuff. Sigh.

jonb62 wrote:

>
> Well I tried the above process and I am still hosed with my PSC 2175
> all-in-one printer.
>
> Symptoms:
> 1. printing a straghtforward A4 page scales it by 50% (quarter area).
> 2. Using filters from kprinter for things like pamphlet printing
> produces a *really* tiny page and lots of lines.
>
> Setting the print quality to draft as per
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/392040
> solves (1) above, but not (2).
>
> Does anyone know how to resolve this?
> In the meantime, I will attempt to go back to the installation DVD and
> re-install the original hplip stuff. Sigh.

You got at least one step further than I did on an HP F4135!

I finally resolved my problems by turning the printer off and deleting it
from everywhere I could find it - Yast, Cups, and HPLIB. I then turned the
printer on and let HPLIB install the "new" device for me. It set the
printer up for both the Yast hardware function and for Cups. The only
oddity was that TWO printers were installed - Deskjet F4100 and
HP_Deskjet_F4100_series. At least either now works as expected so long as
you stick to one or the other and avoid having 2 drivers fighting over one
device.

--
Will Honea