Printing: Unable to execute ippfind utility

#1

Trying to install a Brother MFC-J995DW. I downloaded the rpm and installed with

rpm  -ihv  --nodeps  mfcj995dwpdrv-1.0.5-0.i386.rpm

And it got me the ppd I needed to:

/usr/share/cups/model/Brother/brother_mfcj995dw_printer_en.ppd

And it installed in CUPS ok. It is a network printer and I typed in its IP address during adding the printer. Then it dies silently when printing.

The below journalctl output happens during the CUPS install:

journalctl
Sep 25 15:48:08 bah cupsd[1013]: [CGI] Unable to execute ippfind utility: No such file or directory
Sep 25 15:48:08 bah /hpfax[32616]: hpfax[32616]: error: Error setting home directory: /etc/hp/hplip.conf not found
Sep 25 15:48:08 bah cupsd[1013]: [cups-deviced] PID 32616 (hpfax) stopped with status 1!

We’ll need printing to work for my master plan of replacing Windows in my workplace to move forward. It would be best if it worked without having to rely on USB connections too much. I do know we will need USB for the Zebra label printer.

Thanks for any insight,
Chris

#2

Additionally found and installed the Gnome Printers Extension, which appeared to add the printer successfully. There’s more error output from journalctl:

Sep 25 16:22:49 bah /hpfax[33945]: hpfax[33945]: error: Error setting home directory: home= under [dirs] not found.
Sep 25 16:22:49 bah cupsd[1013]: [cups-deviced] PID 33945 (hpfax) stopped with status 1!
Sep 25 16:22:49 bah cupsd[1013]: REQUEST localhost - root "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 175 CUPS-Get-Devices -
Sep 25 16:22:49 bah cupsd[1013]: [CGI] Unable to execute ippfind utility: No such file or directory
Sep 25 16:22:49 bah cupsd[1013]: REQUEST localhost - root "POST / HTTP/1.1" 200 772 CUPS-Get-Devices -
Sep 25 16:22:52 bah systemd[1]: systemd-hostnamed.service: Succeeded.
Sep 25 16:22:57 bah systemd[1]: systemd-timedated.service: Succeeded.
Sep 25 16:23:13 bah colord[1053]: failed to get session [pid 1013]: No data available
Sep 25 16:23:13 bah cupsd[1013]: REQUEST localhost - root "POST /admin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 293 CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer successful-ok
Sep 25 16:23:13 bah cupsd[1013]: REQUEST localhost - root "POST /admin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 163 CUPS-Accept-Jobs successful-ok
Sep 25 16:23:13 bah cupsd[1013]: REQUEST localhost - root "POST /admin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 163 Resume-Printer successful-ok
Sep 25 16:23:13 bah cupsd[1013]: REQUEST localhost - root "POST /admin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 183 CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer successful-ok
Sep 25 16:23:21 bah cupsd[1013]: REQUEST localhost - root "POST /admin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 163 CUPS-Set-Default successful-ok
Sep 25 16:23:28 bah cupsd[1013]: REQUEST localhost - root "POST /admin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 201 CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer successful-ok
Sep 25 16:23:37 bah cupsd[1013]: CreateProfile failed: org.freedesktop.ColorManager.AlreadyExists:profile id 'Brother-MFC-J995DW-Gray..' already exists
Sep 25 16:23:37 bah cupsd[1013]: CreateProfile failed: org.freedesktop.ColorManager.AlreadyExists:profile id 'Brother-MFC-J995DW-RGB..' already exists
Sep 25 16:23:37 bah colord[1053]: failed to get session [pid 1013]: No data available
Sep 25 16:23:37 bah cupsd[1013]: REQUEST localhost - root "POST /admin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 40152 CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer successful-ok
Sep 25 16:24:32 bah dbus-daemon[425]: [system] Activating service name='org.opensuse.CupsPkHelper.Mechanism' requested by ':1.3222' (uid=1000 pid=33667 comm="gnome-con>
Sep 25 16:24:32 bah dbus-daemon[425]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.opensuse.CupsPkHelper.Mechanism'
Sep 25 16:24:32 bah cupsd[1013]: REQUEST localhost - - "POST /admin/ HTTP/1.1" 401 195 CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer successful-ok
Sep 25 16:24:32 bah cupsd[1013]: REQUEST localhost - root "POST /admin/ HTTP/1.1" 200 195 CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer successful-ok
Sep 25 16:25:01 bah gedit[25313]: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.Avahi was not provided by any .service files
Sep 25 16:25:01 bah gedit[25313]: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.freedesktop.Avahi was not provided by any .service files
#3

It appears that the ippfind utlity no longer properly compiles and isn’t even compiled by default anymore in cups. It also depends on avahi which we’re kept disabled as well. This leaves us with no easy way to put it back at the moment.

#4

I’m trying to find a way to get avahi (see here and here).

Please let me know if I really should stop trying to make network printing happen. Then I can not bang my head against that and investigate if Clear is viable for our workstation where printing IS required… If we cannot print, we cannot ship packages. Without shipping packages, there is no income for the business.

This reminds me of 2004 when I configured a headless server solely to print shipping labels. php was listening on a port. Another computer built the label. Server’s php gets it, imagemagik resized it, and spits out the lp command. But this current case somehow feels less possible? As though there is not a foundation to stand upon?

#5

Network printing works already - I use this at home myself with a Brother MFC printer. The thing that doesn’t work is discovery of network printers. But you don’t need that, per se.

You can manually add ipp printers by going to http://localhost:631 in a browser, logging into cups and then adding the printer with the correct ipp:// address. For most printers, this should be easy to do and the cups UI was somewhat easy to use when I did it a few months back.

#6

Yes, that was the first thing I tried via CUPS on localhost:631. It dies silently with ippfind not found. I typed in the IP address and tried adding via ipp: and http:

Again, network printing is not working. This is a fresh Clear Linux OS install as of yesterday.

#7

Tried to compile Avahi as per here.

  1. Had to find libdaemon… swupd search-file libdaemon said python-basic-dev has it so I installed that.

  2. Then added libdaemon.pc to /usr/lib64/pkgconfig as per the Github quest.

  3. Got avahi from http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/view/svn/basicnet/avahi.html

  4. # ./configure --with-distro=none --disable-qt3 --disable-qt4 --disable-mono --disable-gdbm PYTHON=/usr/bin/python

    checking for PYGOBJECT… no
    configure: error: Could not find Python GObject

  5. # swupd bundle-add devpkg-pygobject

  6. # make

    main.c:56:10: fatal error: libdaemon/dfork.h: No such file or directory
       56 | #include 
          |          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
    compilation terminated.

And I guess that’s about it until another way presents itself to add a network printer.

#8

I wouldn’t recommend it. Find out what your ipp:// address is for your printer instead, and add it to cups through the web insterface. That is the easiest and best solution. Compiling Avahi won’t solve your problem and is only a small step of the issue.

#9

… I also tried every hp- command I could find and those weren’t working.

Success!! I googled for lpadmin add printer examples and found Oracle’s page. Having already created a ppd and knowing where it was, this command worked:

lpadmin -p J995Color -E -v socket://10.10.10.108 -P /usr/share/cups/model/Brother/brother_mfcj995dw_printer_en.ppd

#10

I did this first and it does not work. Not discovery, typing in ipp://10.10.10.108 does not work. At all.

#11

My brother is setup as:

ipp://10.0.0.53/ipp/port1

Try that - with your correct IP address.

#12

I can confirm this format did work: ipp://10.0.0.53/ipp/port1

These did not work:

ipp://10.0.0.53/ipp/
ipp://10.0.0.53/ipp
ipp://10.0.0.53

Side note: journalctl showed CUPS complaining about ippfind missing when I first loaded the page. It did not do this again while adding the printer.

#13

Doesn’t surprise me - I would have likely used the shorter version if it would :slight_smile: