People,
I seem to have hit a software difficulty with the installation of an
HP LJ P1102w.
The printer itself prints a test page if I press the red X button,
but it will not print a test page after installation via a USB port.
Attempts to download/install HP's proprietary plug-in with hp-setup
don't work either, complaing that HPLIP is not properly installed.

SYSTEM DETAILS:
OpSys: Debian 8 "jessie", kernal 3.16.0-4-AMD64
CUPS: 1.7.5
hplip: 3.14.6
lsusb: Bus 005, Device 003, 03f0:102a Hewlett-Packard

Much internet searching all day and much found, which only confuses
me more. Can somebody please help me through this moerass ?

Thanks in advance.
Dynosaw
--

Hi...

The plug-in is required for your printer to work with the HPLIP driver. How did you initially install HPLIP?

Regards...

1 members found this post helpful.

Ardvark,
Thanks for your reply.
Yes, I know that the P1102w needs a proprietary plug-in from (hp).

HPLIP on this platform was provided, along with CUPS, by Debian,
probably during initial installation from an iso file earlier
this year. I invoked no special "apt-get install" procedure.
I run "aptitude full-upgrade" once per week so I assume the
installation is up to date.

(BTW, the 'old' printer, an hp LJ 2100M, worked OK until the
the cartridge ran out yesterday; but the dealers here have
stopped selling the toner cartridges for the 2100M so a change
of printer was unavoidable.)

Cheers,
Dynosaw.
--

What version of HPLIP do you have installed? According to this link

-->http://www.hplipopensource.com/hplip...al_p1102w.html

the minimum is 3.10.4

Camorri,
Thanks for your reaction. HPLIPS here is v. 3.14.6
Which would be OK. Do you think a re-install from
the Debian Repository would do the trick ???
Cheers,
Dynosaw.
--

A re-install can't hurt. Rarely do I find that approach fixes much, it is worth a try.

How did you configure the printer? What do you see in the cups interface? localhost:631 ? Are there any clues in the cups logs? You can access them on the Administration tab.

Hi...

If reinstalling from Debian's repositories don't work, you can try uninstalling that copy and reinstall HPLIP from HP's website here.

EDIT: Before trying my suggestion, please try ferrari's below first.

Regards...

It might be useful to run the diagnostic utility and report back...

Camorri, Aardvark71, Ferrari,

Again thnks for your inputs. The bit rate is increasing!
Up to no now, I've tied to hold back on a byte-explosion.
But clearly more info is requested.

First BACKGROUND
> How did you configure the printer?
Debian 8 was installed 2 March 2016 on brand new AMD64 machine
with an empty harddisk.
Up to 16 Sept 2016 I used an (hp) LJ-2100M (a blk/wht PostScript
printer from the 1990's) which ran under CUPS / hplips, (and not
always sweetly, since CUPS would sometimes send PS-level3 to a
PS-level2 device.) I attempted installation of the P1102w on
17 Sept 2016, after the toner in the 2100M ran out. (Replacement
cartidges for this printer are not sold here any more).

Linux kernal is currently 3.16.0-14-AMD64; I update weekly.
CUPS is version 1.7.5
/etc/hp/hplip.conf suggests that hplip is version 3.14.6

> Are there any clues in the cups logs?
> You can access them on the Administration tab.
I can only find bug reporting -- do you mean that?

> http://localhost:631 ?
Firefox could not access this 'page'.

> hp-doctor
I don't know this program. whereis says it's installed but
I have no man page for this utility. The only docs I can find
on internet are for win-platforms. Where can I find Linux user
documentation?? Then I'll know what to do exactly.

> What do you see in the cups interface?
Sorry, I don't understand the question. What should I look
for?? I can tell you the following:
-- Directory /etc/cups/interfaces is empty;
-- Surprisingly there is no ppd file for a P1102w in
directory /etc.cups/ppd;
-- There are several .conf(-type) files in /etc/cups but I don't
know their significance.

> How did you configure the printer?
I presume you mean how did I attempt to install the P1102w
For the record:
1. Stand-alone test page (the red-X button) printed OK.
2. P1102w connected to a USB2 port of the PC and powered ON.
3. Menu/Administration/Printer Settings invoked as root and the
"New" printer declared. "CUPS connection" chosen (not USB),
printer names etc. edited, and the computer did the rest.
(Which software that was I don't know)
4. After software installation, a test page did not print.
The message "rendering complete" appeared on the monitor
and thereafter "Print Error".
5. The software suggested the trouble-shooring routine, which
I invoked. The routine terminated normally, with a message
to the effect that it could do nothing for me. The trouble-
shooting dump to the monitor is a 142kB .txt file which I
have not attached!!
6. In a terminal I ran lsusb. The result was:
Bus 005 Device 003 03f0:102a Hewlett-Packard.
So the op-sys had found the P1102w.
7. After some internet research it became clear that hplips
needs some (hp)-proprietary software, to convert PS to a
raster format, so I ran hp-setup in a root terminal.
hp-setup terminated with an error message to the effect that
hplip was incomplete. So the printer still did not work.
8. More internet research led to downloads of foo2zjs.tar.gz and
hplip-3.16.7.run, neither of which has been installed since
I can't foretell the consequences. (Sorry, I'm cautious)

> What do you see in the cups interface?
Sorry, I don't understand the question. What should I look
for?? I can tell you the following:
-- Directory /etc/cups/interfaces is empty;
-- There is no ppd file for a P1102w in directory /etc.cups/ppd;
-- There are several .conf(-type) files in /etc/cups but I don't
know their significance.

Again, thanks for your help, which is greatly appreciated.
I'm sorry this posting is rather long but I don't know how enough
about hplips and CUPS to be able shorten it.

Dynosaw.
--

It gets run from a terminal. By default it will run in interactive mode, and attempt to correct any issues that it finds with HPLIP. Give it a shot.

For more info do
http://manpages.org/hp-doctor

This implies Cups is not running. You see the the cups from this web page. You need to investigate why cups is not running, its the standard print spooler in in linux.

I don't run Debain, so I do not know how you start services in Debain. Possibly someone with Debain experience can guide you.

Camorri, Aardvark71, Ferrari,

Again thanks. We have light in the tunnel.

> hp-doctor --help
I ran this program and, provisionally, the medic
seems to have cured the patient. He (I should say
'she') printed an HPLIP test page and then I
printed out an attachment to an e-mail that came
in during the day.

For the record:
It's opening shot was that "Debian 8.6 is either a
deprecated or not supported distro." Since I know
that Debian supports CUPS and hplip, what followed
did not surprise me. In short, the medic procuced a
litany of shortcomings and then downloaded and
installed them (all except one: libjpeg8-dev which
still must be manually installed). It's clear that the
issue was one of dependencies between programs.
Then it went and downloaded the (hp) proprietary
binary software and installed that too.

TWO QUESTIONS REMAIN
1. Does a manual install of libjpeg8-dev imply an
apt-get install procedure or is some other approach
needed?

2. http://localhost:631 ?
Firefox still can't access this pseudo-website.
However I looked at /etc/cupsd.conf file and could
not find a statement: "Listen localhost:631".
I did find: "Listen /var/run/cups/cops.sock".
That was before I ran hp-doctor.

The printer seems to work. Presumably CUPS works
as well. But is there a latent problem with this
URL issue?

Again THANK YOU for you advice and help.

Dynosaw
--

It should work, it is very useful for checking on jobs, configuration logs etc. Could you run the command 'ps aux | grep cups' and see if cups is running. On my system it returns:
BTW my cupsd.conf file shows:
For localhost:631 to work you need a httpd server running.
It is started and stopped with 'apachectl start' and 'apachectl stop' There is a man page giving more detail.

That reads like progress...

Cliff,
I get the same sort of output as you:

ps aux | grep cups
<root> 569 0.0 0.1 71704 5004 ? Ss 06:36 0:00 /usr/sbin/cups-browsed
<root> 1633 0.0 0.2 86880 7592 ? Ss 06:41 0:00 /usr/sbin/cupsd -f
<username> 1719 0.0 0.0 12732 2280 pts/0 S+ 06:45 0:00 grep cups

The <> are mine to generalise the user names.

My linux box is a stand-alone platform, not even a domestic network server.
Is the httpd daemon relevant here? Do I need to add Listen localhost:631 to cupsd.conf ?

Cheers,
Dynosaw
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