I have a HP printer, which I have used before on various linux systems with no problems, so I thought the SUSE HP Device Manager would definately work with it.
Unfortunately it doesn’t though. It has recognised the device but seems unable to talk to it. Whever I try to use the printer or edit the settings I get a “Device communication error” message.
I have reinstalled hplip to no avail. any ideas anyone?
thanks in advance
spoov
What’s the printer?
Did you configure the printer in Yast during install?
Did you try to use yast for printer-configuration…?
Yast-Printer
delete all printers
make a scan for new printers
use the first driver you can select
make a test print page
if it works (test page), but printer still don t work you have the same problem like i had.
I had a lot of trouble with my old hp all-in-one printer. The printer was set on “hold” and i not find any way to bring him to run in the hp device manager, so i bottled with this hp and bought a brother printer…for my brother has the best linux drivers. Now i print with cpus
Right i’ve sorted it. It seems that the recommended driver (as recommended by Yast) didn’t work. It did recognise the printer though (ie the correct name/model number was coming up, which was what was throwing me – I assumed this meant that the correct driver was installed). I thought HPLIP was the name of the driver to be honest as I had installed this on other distros and it had worked straight away afterwards.
So anyway I changed to a different, not recommended, driver (which i assume means that there are several in the HPLIP package), and I still got the comms error, until i went back to Yast and tried to print a test page (with the not recommended driver selected). The page printed and now the printer and the HP applet works fine.
Go figure.
Seems to be a trend in my very limited experience of SUSE. Things that just work in other distros take some fiddling with complex GUIs to get working in SUSE. But at least when things don’t work there are a load of options to mess with to try to get it working. I don’t know if i like it or not! 
For the record the printer is an HP inkjet 840.
EDIT - SCRATCH- it doesn’t work after all. Unless you only want to print test pages!! This is crazy. Caleb it looks like i have your problem.
I got it working in the end - through the CUPS web interface.
No thanks to Yast and the HP applet thing, which just presented hundreds of options none of which worked.
Basically the CUPS interface sets the same options. How did you try to setup the HP device manager?
…oh the “test-page-only-bug” rotfl! Interesting! 
CUPS RULEZZ!!! I like it so much and the fact, brother offers cpus based drivers as usable “.rpm”
I think this “test-page-only-syndrom” is this kind: The driver and the printer works, bus the printer is on “hold” setting. But how to make the printer “run”?? HP device manager has no solution…strange!:\
It is just on, when I first booted up and every time since. Do you know how to turn it off? I can’t find a menu entry nor a daemon listed.
Caleb IX wrote:
>
> spoovy;2161903 Wrote:
>> I have a HP printer, which I have used before on various linux systems
>> with no problems, so I thought the SUSE HP Device Manager would
>> definately work with it.
>>
>>
>> Unfortunately it doesn’t though. It has recognised the device but
>> seems unable to talk to it. Whever I try to use the printer or edit the
>> settings I get a “Device communication error” message.
>>
>> I have reinstalled hplip to no avail. any ideas anyone?
>>
>> thanks in advance
>>
>> spoov
>
> Did you try to use yast for printer-configuration…?
>
> Yast-Printer
>
> delete all printers
>
> make a scan for new printers
>
> use the first driver you can select
>
> make a test print page
>
> if it works (test page), but printer still don t work you have the same
> problem like i had.
>
> I had a lot of trouble with my old hp all-in-one printer. The printer
> was set on “hold” and i not find any way to bring him to run in the hp
> device manager, so i bottled with this hp and bought a brother
> printer…for my brother has the best linux drivers. Now i print with
> cpus
I fought that battle for a couple of weeks with a bit more complicated
setup: T4000PC on ethernet, a 2550L on USB and an F4150 on USB from the on
machine. The solution here was to delete ALL printers from YaST and do the
installation entirely from hplip. I then publish all 3 to CUPS from the
one machine and threaten mayhem to anyone who tries to print from another
station via anything but CUPS. Apparently, the YaST- installed drivers
work just well enough to screw things up for the hplip drivers. The setup
is still fragile but workable as long a people LEAVE IT ALONE!!
–
Will Honea
I have removed HPLIP and that has got rid of the HP-control applet thing, but i can thankfully still print using CUPS. Mine is only a simple setup so I’m happy enough with this for the time being.
It’s a shame though, as this is another fail for openSUSE in an area I expected it to be strong. It gives me no pleasure to say that i’ve only been using openSUSE 11.2 for a few days but it’s been an uphill slog every step of the way so far.