HPLIP (Hewlett Packard Linux Imaging and Printing)

Nirgendsdorf · September 7, 2019, 10:05am

Hi, thought I’d share my experience with CL HPLIP, the CL version of HP’s Linux driver installer for their printer and fax products. From the posts I’ve seen in the dev mailing list, this is an ongoing project.

First I had to discover the HPLIP web site, then be reminded (some dev list emails came in) that the CL devels are working on it. The system is CLI, launched with ‘hp-setup’. ‘hp-setup -h’ produces a command summary.

For a locally connected USB printer, first step is to run ‘lsusb’ to discover the port to which it is connected. In my case:

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 03f0:0217 HP, Inc LaserJet 2200

Well, this wasn’t working. The installer would prompt me, “USB or network?” and then fail to detect the printer on the USB.

Fortunately, ‘hp-setup’ includes a debug option, which revealed:

hp-setup[4804]: debug: Searching for section [hp_laserjet_2200] in file /usr/share/hplip/data/models/models.dat

Searching models.dat, I found a [hp_laserjet_2200_series] section. I edited the section name so it would match the search, and the installer was able to find and install the right driver, and then print a test page.

Nirgendsdorf · September 12, 2019, 9:09am

Followup: Actually, no, it didn’t find and install the right driver, after all. HPLIP found and installed a Postscript driver. Strangely enough, hp-setup was able to print a test page, but any attempt to print from an application failed with lots of errors.

However, where gnome setup could not detect a printer before I ran hp-setup, it was able to provide a list of printers (“Select from Database”) afterwards.

From there I was able to select a working driver for my printer.