Firstly, my junky old HP printer works just fine. The odd thing that I experience is that every month or so (perhaps more frequently), when I need to print something, I have to go through the driver plug-in installation. The installation hangs for quite a while but almost always works without issue. So the process of installing the driver again is really nothing more than annoyance. That said, I can’t determine why the plug-in needs to be installed so regularly? My initial thought was that this might be the way the drivers are updated, however the auto-updates (checking and notifying) is unchecked within the settings, so it’s unlikely that it’s a form of updating drivers.
Any ideas as to why the driver is either a) uninstalled after a period of time, or b) needs re-installation on such a regular basis?
Couldn’t find threads with a similar issue for this distro or any other but I’d be surprised if I were the only one experiencing this.
**One final thought: I just checked which groups user is apart of and lp is not listed. May my issue be because each time I install the driver, I do so as part of wheel but the driver gets removed because I’m not apart of lp as well?
You are not alone. That’s my printer too, black and white only. Usb plugged. And yes I have the same unresolved hassle now for several years. I just chalked it up to HP’s general attitude toward the user.
Sorry no help here.
Yes, it’s been years for me too. Today, needing to print something, I’d finally decided to look for a solution or at minimum a reason. And I suspect that you’re right: HP’s attitude.
Thanks for confirming that I’m not alone.
Yea I generally go to HP Device Manager / printer control and restart the printer. Often try the trouble shoot dialog, and end up downloading the driver(which fails) then the printer decides to cooperate and starts printing.
Basically I push buttons until something works!
I also use an HP black and white ‘cheap’ laser printer which still works after 11 or so years. I’ve had similar issues with the printer driver having to be downloaded and installed via their printer manager software in HPLIP. It still works with occasional hiccups when hplip needs to be updated along with cups.
As a consumer driven entity for computer products they’ve lost me as a customer for all their products. I also have a flatbed scanner 6700c (10+years old). It was dropped by Windows a long time ago as a USB scanner. But it works in Linux with Scanlite and now with naps2 which I heard about in these forums. It would have been in the trash years ago if I couldn’t gotten it to work.
This is indeed a problem and i think that happens because hplip gets updated so it needs a newer plugin version. So everytime hplip gets updated so must the plugin updated as well.
I have this printer and this is how i solved it, but it has been a while and i use a different printer now (that does not need a plugin)
First
Hp-setup could not detect my printer P1102W.
The reason was that the file models.dat contained the wrong name:
Hp_laserjet_professional_p_1102w instead of
Hp_laserjet_professional_p1102w
This file is located at /usr/share/hplip/data/models
It seems that other printer names are also misspelled in this file, the all seems to have the extra underscore in the name…it looks intentional
Second
The required plugin could not be installed
This can be resolved by two simple commands:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64 /usr/lib64/x86_64-linux-gnu
After printer setup
Check in hplip settings tab misc
Set both banner selectboxes op no banner.
Default it might be on confidential…
Thanks for the input. I’ve not noticed hplip getting updated in correlation with the need to reinstall the driver however this is likely due to me giving only half a glace (at best) to what’s being updated.
I’ve not had any issues with my printer being detected but I did checked the models.dat and there’s an entry for both so it would seem they’ve updated the list.
I’ve not had any issues with being unable to install the driver. At worst, the installer seems to hang for at least a few minutes. Although I suspect what’s happening is that the file is being downloaded in the background without any indication that anything’s happening. (And if memory serves, I believe some VPN IPs are blocked.)
In my instance, the print settings were defaulted to ‘No banner page’ for both options.
I’ll try to remember to keep an eye out for updates to hplip. I always download updates before installing with -Syuw so the next time I see an update, I’ll fire up the printer, update the driver if needed, and once hplip is updated, I’ll go back and see if I’m again needed to reinstall the driver.
how did you install the printer? I have an hp1018, the driver is on an older ubuntu laptop. I had similar issues after system update. I have removed the packages installed by the system and got hplip from the hp site and just never update it only, the system, barely had issues. Try to use the install script from the site, if there’s an option to use system packages, don’t use them.
Or install a system on an old laptop and only use it for printing and never update it… Just use it as a print server, you don’t even need to install a desktop environment.
Does the EOS installer have an option for hplip or just cups? If hplip was an option then I likely installed it that way. In any case, I’d rather not rely solely on HP nor do I want to forego updates as I want to apply security patches when available.
I appreciate the suggestion but I’m not looking for a work around. As I mentioned this is really only a mild annoyance. I’m simply looking for an explanation for this behavior. If a solution is found, that’s a bonus.
cups is not a driver it’s the printing service, hplip is the driver thingy, but you need both, there’s a hplip package in the arch repo, also some hplip-plugin in the aur, not sure what it is.
wheel: Administration group, commonly used to give privileges to perform administrative actions. It has full read access to journal files and the right to administer printers in [CUPS](https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/CUPS). Can also be used to give access to the sudo and su utilities (neither uses it by default).
lp:
Access to parallel port devices (printers and others).
ArchWiki mentiones:
Note:hplip depends on foomatic-db-engine which prevents the drivers list from appearing when a printer is added to CUPS via the web user interface (Unable to get list of printer drivers). Possible workarounds:
Either: Install hplip first, then retrieve the PPD file that matches your printer from /usr/share/ppd/HP/. Next, remove hplip entirely as well as any unnecessary dependencies. Finally, install the printer manually using the CUPS web UI, selecting the PPD file you retrieved, and then re-install hplip. After a reboot, you should have a fully working printer.
Or: Remove hplip, foomatic-db and foomatic-db-engine along with any unnecessary dependencies. Reinstall hplip and restart CUPS. Install your printer using the CUPS web UI, which should now be able to find the drivers automatically. No reboot needed.
Unless I’m misunderstanding this, it seems to be a solution for those who are having issues finding/installing a given driver, neither of which are problems I’m experiencing. Should the requirement for reinstallation of the the driver not be related to updating hplip, I’ll look into this solution further.
Conveniently, there’s an update to hplip (1:3.23.12-1 → 1:3.23.12-2). Prior to updating this package, I printed a document. A few days ago, I’d been required to reinstall the driver plug-in, after an extended period of not needing to print anything, so I’m not surprised that I wasn’t prompted to reinstall again. I updated my system and one of the first things I did after logging back in was to print another document. Interestingly, I was not prompted to reinstall the driver plug-in. So it is certainly not always the case that the driver plug-in needs reinstallation/updating after hplip is updated, as suggested by @fred666 and @mihalycsaba. This is good, at least for me, as I don’t believe a solution is one that directs you to forego updates. (Looking at you Drobo.)
Edit to the above. As @fred666 pointed out, the package was rebuilt but hplip itself was not updated.
This is a package update, not a hplip update? If so then yes plugin still works, same version.
I really don’t understand this BS with that plugin anymore AFAIK the plugin is restricted to the same hplip version but that might not be true anymore?
You said after a month of no use the plugin need to be reinstalled but that doesn’t make sense unless somehow the plugin deactivate itself if not used for a while?
I did buy a used hp laser-jet that doesn’t use a plugin as i was getting tired from issues with it…
I’m pretty sure the updates are for newer printers, they are just packaged together, there’s no need to apply those updates, unless you have a newer printer. If you installed with pacman, just put the package in IgnorePkg and forget about it.
