HP plugin installation does not work properly, HPLIP 3.16.11

English Hardware
1

I recently tried to configure my notebook for the use with a HP Color Laser Jet Pro MFP M277n all-in-one device.
This needs the ominous software plugin. It turned out to be cumbersome, but in the end I had success with a workaround.

Here is what I did:

  1. Trying with YAST>Hardware>Printer, launching hp-setup from the second dialog. After a long time waiting in the third dialog with lots of CPU activity I killed the processes.

  2. run

# hp-setup

from the command line. This tells me that I have to run hp-plugin as a user.

  1. Running
> hp-plugin 

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.16.11)
Plugin Download and Install Utility ver. 2.1

...

Checking for network connection...
Downloading plug-in from: 
error: Plugin download failed with error code = 8
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/share/hplip/ui4/plugindialog.py", line 260, in NextButton_clicked
    self.pluginObj.deleteInstallationFiles(download_plugin_file)
  File "/usr/share/hplip/installer/pluginhandler.py", line 474, in deleteInstallationFiles
    os.unlink(digsig_file)
OSError: [Errno 21] Ist ein Verzeichnis: '.asc'
  1. Googling this error led me to the following solution: Download the files
[hplip-3.16.11-plugin.run  hplip-3.16.11-plugin.run.asc/CODE]
from [https://www.openprinting.org/download/printdriver/auxfiles/HP/plugins](https://www.openprinting.org/download/printdriver/auxfiles/HP/plugins)run

hp-plugin

 again. Select install from local source from the appearing dialog. Ignore the warning about missing key ("install anyway"). This led to successfull
plugin installation. Then run

hp-setup

 once again. Finally printing and scanning works as expected, but with the stale taste of an insecure installation.