HOWTO: Install HP Printers for Beginners

[user1397]

This is a little guide on how to correctly install an HP printer, since so many people seem to have trouble with this. I have also provided a very basic scanner start up guide. Here are the steps:

Printing:

First of all, connect your printer to your computer, and turn it on.

See if your printer gets autodetected by Ubuntu. If it does, something will pop up saying it is configured for use and is ready.

If nothing happens, simply go to System > Administration > Printing > New.

If it doesn't find any or doesn't recognize your printer, try the official hplip website to try to download the correct drivers for your printer.

If even that doesn't work, then post here with your printer name and configuration, and maybe I or someone else can help you.

Scanning:

For HP all-in-ones (such as the PSC series), after you have followed the above steps, put the paper you want to scan in the scanner and then go to Applications > Graphics > XSane Image scanning program. In XSane, click "scan" and then when it's done, click save as and save it wherever you want.

If you have a sole HP scanner, then you could try to just plug it in, turn it on, and try to scan it with XSane, but I don't gurantee that it will work.

***NOTE: If you want to send a scan that you made on your linux box to a windows computer, it won't open it up (I don't know why, it just wouldn't for me). You have to right-click on the image, and go to "open with GIMP Image Editor". Then go to save as and click on "select file type (by extension)". Then scroll down to JPEG format and click ok as many times so that it saves. It'll then be readable in windows.

[klytu]

I recently had a problem with an HP DeskJet 722C parallel port printer. Installed and worked perfectly following the steps above for both Hoary (5.04) and Breezy (5.10). In Dapper (6.06) the printer was detected and installed but would not print. Print jobs would spool and then just stop without printing. Checking the error logs indicated something was going wrong just before the output page generated, but no specific error was listed at that point.

Solved the problem by editing /etc/pnm2ppa.conf (pnm2ppa is the recommended driver for several HP DeskJet parallel port printers). I did:

sudo gedit /etc/pnm2ppa.conf

In the section beginning with version, changed from this:

version
#version 710 # 710, 712, 722 also acceptable
#version 820
#version 1000

to this:

version 722

Saved change and now could print normally. Obviously one would substitute one's own actual HP DeskJet model number above. Appears this would probably work for the 710C, 712C, 722C, 820C, and 1000C.

[user1397]

I recently had a problem with an HP DeskJet 722C parallel port printer. Installed and worked perfectly following the steps above for both Hoary (5.04) and Breezy (5.10). In Dapper (6.06) the printer was detected and installed but would not print. Print jobs would spool and then just stop without printing. Checking the error logs indicated something was going wrong just before the output page generated, but no specific error was listed at that point.

Solved the problem by editing /etc/pnm2ppa.conf (pnm2ppa is the recommended driver for several HP DeskJet parallel port printers). I did:

sudo gedit /etc/pnm2ppa.conf

In the section beginning with version, changed from this:

version
#version 710 # 710, 712, 722 also acceptable
#version 820
#version 1000

to this:

version 722

Saved change and now could print normally. Obviously one would substitute one's own actual HP DeskJet model number above. Appears this would probably work for the 710C, 712C, 722C, 820C, and 1000C.

thank you for that info, i'm sure it'll help a lot of people with their deskjet printers.

[El Guapo]

A few more tricks for those installing OfficeJet printers. From synaptic also download the hpoj package as well. Then after all is said and done you should have a configuration of your OfficeJet printer appear and walk you through the details.

If not, go to the command line and type:

sudo /etc/init.d/hpoj setup

From here you just follow the directions. Then when you enter the System -> Administration -> Printing -> New Printer your OfficeJet should be seen as a local printer (even if it is on a network!).

[11hjpphty76lkjj]

Actually you will not want to install hpoj and hplip together as they will cause conflicts. We have a good step by step for ubuntu on our website.

http://hplip.sourceforge.net

hpoj is very old and does not have any support for any products for the last 2 years as well as no fax support or status support, *insert long list here*,etc.

The best thing to do is NOT install hpoj and work with hplip as it as extended support and functionality.

I've tested over 500 hp printers with HPLIP and have tested with ubuntu very frequently. The step by step on our website is straight forward and I should hope will help users install and configure their printer easily. As well I'm open to any suggestions on making our instructions easier and more straight forward so feel free to give me ideas!

[BatteryCell]

I recently had a problem with an HP DeskJet 722C parallel port printer. Installed and worked perfectly following the steps above for both Hoary (5.04) and Breezy (5.10). In Dapper (6.06) the printer was detected and installed but would not print. Print jobs would spool and then just stop without printing. Checking the error logs indicated something was going wrong just before the output page generated, but no specific error was listed at that point.

Solved the problem by editing /etc/pnm2ppa.conf (pnm2ppa is the recommended driver for several HP DeskJet parallel port printers). I did:

sudo gedit /etc/pnm2ppa.conf

In the section beginning with version, changed from this:

version
#version 710 # 710, 712, 722 also acceptable
#version 820
#version 1000

to this:

version 722

Saved change and now could print normally. Obviously one would substitute one's own actual HP DeskJet model number above. Appears this would probably work for the 710C, 712C, 722C, 820C, and 1000C.

Yea everyone keeps saying that changing this to version 7xx or version 0 or just commenting it out fixes the problem but I still cant print My printer says that its processing then after a few second it says that it completed the job, but it really didnt

[Nosferatu]

THANK YOU!! a thousand times. I've been trying to get my HP Deskjet 990C printing since January, (ok, I wasn't constantly at it since then). I've finally seen a test page printed successfully. Usually when I printed a test page the job would be sent and the printer would pause. I followed your instruction to install all the HPIJS packages. All of them were already installed except the very last one libijs-dev. So I Marked that one and followed the rest of the steps and voila...a test page.
Thanks again.

[user1397]

THANK YOU!! a thousand times. I've been trying to get my HP Deskjet 990C printing since January, (ok, I wasn't constantly at it since then). I've finally seen a test page printed successfully. Usually when I printed a test page the job would be sent and the printer would pause. I followed your instruction to install all the HPIJS packages. All of them were already installed except the very last one libijs-dev. So I Marked that one and followed the rest of the steps and voila...a test page.
Thanks again.

you're quite welcome!

[bknutt]

Actually you will not want to install hpoj and hplip together as they will cause conflicts. We have a good step by step for ubuntu on our website.

http://hplip.sourceforge.net

hpoj is very old and does not have any support for any products for the last 2 years as well as no fax support or status support, *insert long list here*,etc.

The best thing to do is NOT install hpoj and work with hplip as it as extended support and functionality.

I've tested over 500 hp printers with HPLIP and have tested with ubuntu very frequently. The step by step on our website is straight forward and I should hope will help users install and configure their printer easily. As well I'm open to any suggestions on making our instructions easier and more straight forward so feel free to give me ideas!

So I tried these instructions since I'm brand new to linux and have a hp 7310xi printer on my network. I keep getting the following error when I try to execute the configure command

checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
checking for gawk... no
checking for mawk... mawk
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... no
checking build system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... i686-pc-linux-gnu
checking for style of include used by make... none
checking for gcc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cc... no
checking for cl... no
configure: error: no acceptable C compiler found in $PATH
See `config.log' for more details.

I've installed gcc 4.0 using the synaptic installer with no change in the error message. Any suggestions? Could it be looking for an earlier version of gcc?

[bknutt]

hpoj is very old and does not have any support for any products for the last 2 years as well as no fax support or status support, *insert long list here*,etc.

I saw "hplip" in synaptic (ubuntu 6.06). Should it be used instead?