Connecting openSUSE to an HP wireless printer

Setting up an HP wireless printer on openSUSE … This blog illustrates how simple and fast it is to setup an HP wireless printer that supports JetDirect on openSUSE-12.1.

My HP wireless printer at home is an HP C309a.

http://thumbnails41.imagebam.com/18265/5c02df182640112.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/5c02df182640112)

I am assuming here one has already gone to the wireless printer, and using the controls on the wireless printer connected the wireless printer to one’s home WLAN. In my case we have WPA2 on our WLAN, and it took a couple of minutes with the printer searching the networks in our neighbourhood, before our SSID showed up in the printer’s small control menu. But after that rather long wait, once our router’s SSID was discovered, I was able to enter our WLAN password and our printer was then on our WLAN. I was able to obtain our wireless printer’s IP address from both the printer’s menu’s, and from our router’s menu’s. Note for the method I employed, I needed the IP-Address of the printer on our WLAN. For this example I will assume the IP address of the HP C309a is 192.168.2.107.

Now I recently (31-March-12) installed a 64-bit openSUSE-12.1 KDE on my main PC, and I setup the printer in a few minutes. This is incredibly fast. But its that fast, mainly of course because I have done this many times before.

1st - launch YaST > Hardware > Printers

and you can see my printer is not discovered.

http://thumbnails63.imagebam.com/18265/be781e182640116.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/be781e182640116)

So I select “Print via Network” on that YaST2 page, and click ‘OK’ to the following warning:

http://thumbnails62.imagebam.com/18265/0365b3182640118.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/0365b3182640118)

In the “Print via Network” dialog box, with “Print via Network” selected, I select the “Connection Wizard” in order to make this easy … :slight_smile:

http://thumbnails47.imagebam.com/18265/54d5e9182640122.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/54d5e9182640122)

… continued in next post …

Setting up openSUSE to connect to an HP wireless printer (continued … )

http://thumbnails69.imagebam.com/18265/09207d182640128.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/09207d182640128)

The Connection Wizard gives a dialog box like that above. Note I selected 'TCP Port (AppSocket/JetDirect) [because I know my HP C309a supports the HP JetDirect standard] and I typed in the IP address of my wireless printer. I also selected HP as the printer manufacturer.

I pressed ‘Test Connection’ and my C309a rang a bell, and I saw this message:

http://thumbnails62.imagebam.com/18265/56587c182640139.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/56587c182640139)

With the printer connection discovered, and HP selected, after pressing ‘ok’ on the ‘Connection Wizard’, then YaST2 looks for the printer driver information:

http://thumbnails6.imagebam.com/18265/08fe6d182640143.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/08fe6d182640143)

In my example here, while a massive HP printer list was presented, it did NOT include my C309a printer. No worries !

http://thumbnails72.imagebam.com/18265/784fec182640146.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/784fec182640146)

I selected ‘A4’ as my default paper size. and then selected to ‘Run hp-setup’. Note this asssumes one has the rpm hlpip installed (which should be installed by default in openSUSE). If one is using an old version of openSUSE, one should download and install a newer version of hplip.

… continued in next post …

Setting up an openSUSE on an HP wireless printer (continued … )

Now when running ‘hplip’ by selecting ‘Run hp-setup’ the ‘HP Device Manager - Setup’ dialog box will show up. Simply select 'Network/Ethernet/Wireless network (direct connection or JetDirect). This is easy to know, because I already noted my C309a was JetDirect compatible. Also select the ‘show advanced optinos’ and select ‘Manual Discovery’ and type in the ‘IP address’ (192.168.2.107 in my example) and click ‘Next’.

http://thumbnails43.imagebam.com/18265/f8fddf182640153.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/f8fddf182640153)

In my case the C309a was immediately discovered and the ‘Select from Discovered Devices’ dialog box populated. I selected my printer and clicked on ‘Next’.

http://thumbnails41.imagebam.com/18265/cb28c3182640159.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/cb28c3182640159)

At this point, I had a setup device dialog box. In here I typed inside the field ‘Description’ some arbitrary text : ‘HPwireless’ is the text I used. This is important to me, because when I go to print from an application, dependant on the appliction this ‘may’ be the text describing my wireless printer. I also typed in WLAN. Note I was careful NOT to type unusual characters in this box, as I do not know how well the programmers made the code behind these boxes robust against ‘underscores’ or ‘dashes’ …

http://thumbnails60.imagebam.com/18265/5e8cc8182640166.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/5e8cc8182640166)

Next YaST configures the new printer, and the job is done. The printer is setup.

http://thumbnails42.imagebam.com/18265/c3d47c182640170.jpg](http://www.imagebam.com/image/c3d47c182640170)

This is what works for me.

If you have a problem setting up your printer, please start a NEW THREAD in our openSUSE forum and ask for help.

Hi!
I use an HP Desktop 1050 all-in-one and a router ASUS RT-N13U.
I have installed a wirerless printer, but there is no wireless connection with the scanner.

How can I install wireless connection also with thr scanner?

I use an openSUSE 12.1 Tumbleweed with the Gnome 3.2.1

[QUOTE=andranique;bt496]I use an openSUSE 12.1 Tumbleweed with the Gnome 3.2.1

[QUOTE=andranique;bt495]Hi!
I use an HP Desktop 1050 all-in-one and a router ASUS RT-N13U.
I have installed a wirerless printer, but there is no wireless connection with the scanner.

How can I install wireless connection also with thr scanner?
[/QUOTE]
[/QUOTE]
@ andranique, its very easy to set up the scanner in LXDE and KDE. I have not done so with Gnome3. Here is my blog entry on this subject: Setting up in openSUSE a network scanner from an HP all-in-one-printer-scanner - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

“Scanner configuration” cannot find my wireless scanner (HP Desk Jet 1050 all-in-one). I tried to add the scanner from the list of “scanner model and driver selection” but nothing came out of it.

andanique, open up a help thread on this in our forum (in the Tumbleweed subforum area). There is so much information you have not provided wrt what you had setup, and hence a forum help thread is a far superior venue. Ensure you open the help thread in Tumbleweed section and not in another forum area, as its possibly your problem is Tumbleweed (which is impossible to tell with the information provided thus far).

>oldcpu

Thanks a lot