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Having trouble installing a piece of hardware? Want to know if that peripheral is compatible with Linux?
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I am not lucky enough to use the OS listed in the HCL which automatically installed it. My problem is in installing an HP Deskjet 5550 printer, which is said to be fully compatible with linux. It is the only USB printer connected to my machine. I am using Mandrike Linux 10.0, which uses the kernel 2.6.3-7mdk. When I use the lsusb command, I get:
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 046d:c00c Logitech, Inc. Optical Wheel Mouse
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
As you can see, my Logitech mouse is detected, and the printer, which is plugged in beside it, is not. The printer works, i.e. when I am in windows it works. I have went through many methods attempting to install it, but I will detail my latest efforts:
System/Configuration/Configure Your Desktop.
Peripherals/Printers
Go to Administrative Mode
Printing system currently used: CUPS
Add Printer/Class
Select USB Printer #1
Select HP Deskjet 5550
Select (for driver) HP Deskjet 5550 (Foomatic + hpijs) [recommended]
Then I click test.
It says: "Test page successfully sent to printer. Wait until printing is complete, then click the OK button."
However, printing is never complete. I can leave it like this for hours and nothing ever comes up. If I go into the CUPS WWW admin tool, I can see my print job, but it still never prints. I've tried this installation method, and others, several times, and I am having no luck. Any help would be appreciated.
No, I do not have a /dev/usb/lp0. All I have is /dev/usb/hid , which has nothing in it. I will check on the module you mentioned. I installed the default Mandrake distribution, and I'm not sure if that is included. It will be easier to just install it and try again, so I'll post here after I've been able to do that.
Wow, it's been awhile. Haven't had time to work with Linux. Well, I do have the module loaded. When I run the command "lsmod", I get, among other things:
OK, I'm still having no luck with this. I uninstalled and reinstalled CUPS, and then tried to install the printer using the WWW admin tool and the PPD file that I had downloaded specifically for the HP Deskjet 5550, but it still didn't work. When I try to print a test page using the admin tool, it says that all is well. If I go to jobs, I will see the print job sitting there. When I go back to printers in the admin tool after attempting a test page, it says this:
"Unable to open USB device "usb:/dev/usblp0": No such device"
Device URI: usb:/dev/usblp0
The file /dev/usblp0 does exist, but only because I created it. No matter how many times I attempted to add the printer this file was never created.
If I look in usbview, then I do not see the printer, I only see my mouse.
If I look at the file /proc/bus/usb/devices then I see 2 UHCI Controllers, 1 EHCI Controller, 2 OHCI Controllers, my mouse, and no printer.
I am not very skilled in the art of Linux, and would appreciate any further advice that can be given. I will post further details as my problem continues.
Well, having had my feel of trying to deal with Linux's ineptitude with the USB system, I decided to drag out my old parallel printer cable and give that a go. Approximately 2 minutes later I had a nice looking test page coming out from the WWW admin tool. This is, of course, why Linux is going to need some more work before it becomes a truly mainstream OS.
On the plus side, though, I have the need to occasionally do work by ssh'ing into a server and running an x-windows interface, and I just found out yesterday that the free tools that come with Linux are vastly superior to Hummingbird Exceed, and so that gives me another plus for using Linux. I'm confident that I will eventually have my printer working on USB, but atleast I can print perfectly fine now.
Not content to let Linux beat me out of using USB, I took more extreme measures. I downloaded the latest kernel, 2.6.8.1, and then configured it, ensuring that all necessary options were selected to allow USB to operate. Now my printer, and my sidewinder joystick (woohoo) are detected as usb devices. If I look at /proc/bus/usb/devices I see:
Showing that my printer is now detected as a USB device (I have only the USB connected and not the parallel cable). I am able set it up in the cups www admin tool using the downloaded ppd file. When I attempt a test print the job shows up and immediately aborts, and I can look in the jobs and see the completed jobs, and all completed jobs have been aborted.
I attempted to print by typing in the command line:
echo "hello">>/dev/usb/lp0
The printer tried for a bit, gave me the flashing error light, and when I pushed the button it spit out the page with hello on it. So I've made some progress, but I'm still not getting it to work.
Woohoo!! On a whim I just decided to go into the admin tool and attempt to print a test page again, and then for some reason one came out, and now I can print stuff using my USB cable. The only thing that I did was reinstall the printer with a newer driver (hpijs-rss), but it didn't print when I did a test print after doing that. Then I rebooted again for other reasons and when I tried to print it mysteriously worked. I wish I had a better explanation in case someone read this post and was having the same problem, but I'm going with the old adage now of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" and I'm leaving the printer setup alone. Thanks for the suggestions leonscape.
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