[REGRESSION] Officejet 6500A does not install w/ hplip 3.12.6 or above

[Hendrik Donner]

Hallo,
my Officejet 6500A works fine with hplip 3.12.4, but after upgrading to 3.12.6 or 3.12.9 and reinstalling the printer the printed testpage contains garbage (random symbols) or : "**** Unable to open the initial device, quitting."
The installation routine then tries to install hplip plugins, but always fails.

Note that upgrading hplip 3.12.4 to 3.12.9 without reinstalling the printer seems to work.

This is on Arch Linux 64bit.

[Hendrik Donner (hendrik-donner)]

hp-check.log from hplip 3.12.9 added.

[Hendrik Donner (hendrik-donner)]

Still an issue in hplip 3.12.10: the printed testpage contains: "**** Unable to open the initial device, quitting." and after that the plugin install fails.

I have not tested an update to hplip 3.12.20 without reinstalling the printer yet. I guess i have to stay at 3.12.4, that is the last version which successfully installs my Officejet 6500A.

[Hendrik Donner (hendrik-donner)]

I have reinstalled the printer now, using version 3.12.4. Upgrade to 3.12.10 seems to work if you don't reinstall the printer. At least i have been able to print a testpage.

[Hendrik Donner (hendrik-donner)]

And updating to 3.12.10a doesn't work, the printer stops working and cups reports a "Filter failed" message, all jobs are stopped. The install routine now stops before trying to install the HPLIP plugins, but the test page job started during installation is stopped and cups reports "Filter failed". Unable to print anything.
This is over ethernet btw.

[Sanjay Kumar (sanjay-kumar14)]

Hi,

Thanks for reporting the issue in HPLIP. To help us understand and analyze the issue please follow following things.
=> Download and install the latest HPLIP release from
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install/install/index.html (automatic installer) or
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install/manual/index.html (manual installation, if automatic installer is not supported)

=> run "hp-check --fix" command in the terminal if manual installation is done

=> Reconfigure print queue with the commands in the terminal mentioned below.
       => system-config-printer (remove all print queues)
      => su -c "hp-plugin"
             or
      => sudo hp-plugin (This will download right plugin)
       => hp-setup (It should not be run in a root mode. This command is adding print queue, make sure you select ppd name having "-ps" or "hpcups" substring)
=>Try printing now.

[Hendrik Donner (hendrik-donner)]

I followed your instructions (well I don't have system-config-printer so i removed the queue with hp-toolbox/CUPS webinterface) and hp-plugin crashed:

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.12.10a)
Plugin Download and Install Utility ver. 2.1

Copyright (c) 2001-14 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

\Checking for network connection...
Downloading configuration file from: http://hplip.sf.net/plugin.conf
Checking for network connection...
Downloading plug-in from: http://www.openprinting.org/download/printdriver/auxfiles/HP/plugins/hplip-3.12.10a-plugin.run
Receiving digital keys: /usr/bin/gpg --no-permission-warning --keyserver pgp.mit.edu --recv-keys 0xA59047B9
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing HPLIP 3.12.10a Plugin Self Extracting Archive.....................................................
  File "./plugin_install.py", line 78
    except ImportError, e:
                      ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
error: Plug-in install failed.

Done.

Looks like a python2 vs python3 issue to me: https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/677072
/usr/bin/python is a symlink to /usr/bin/python3 so hplip should use /usr/bin/python2 for its python2 based source code.
(http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/)

hp-check --fix complains about this:
 <Package-name> <Package-Desc> <Required/Optional> <Min-Version> <Installed-Version> <Status> <Comment>
...
 error: policykit Admin-Policy-framework OPTIONAL - 0.107 MISSING 'policykit needs to be installed'

policykit actually is installed. And it's optional, so I guess it's not related to my problem.

I don't have a ppd with "-ps" or "hpcups" as substring, the installation routine automatically chooses "hp-officejet_6500_e710a-f-hpijs.ppd", i also have a "hp-officejet_6500_e710a-f.ppd.gz" file. Tested both, none works for me.

This migth be helpful: the hp-setup routine prints
/warning: No PPD found for model officejet_6500_e710a-f using new algorithm. Trying old algorithm...
to the console during the installation.

I also installed the hp-plugin package from Arch Linux as a workaround for not being able to download the plugins using the hp-plugin tool, doesn't help me either.

Anything else i could try? Note that everything worked fine up to hplip version 3.12.4.

[Hendrik Donner (hendrik-donner)]

Correction: i used th hplip package from Arch Linux, because both the automatic und manual installation fail:

Manual:
Fails in ./configure:

...
checking for a Python interpreter with version >= 2.2... python
checking for python... /usr/bin/python
checking for python version... 3.3
checking for python platform... linux
checking for python script directory... ${prefix}/lib/python3.3/site-packages
checking for python extension module directory... ${exec_prefix}/lib/python3.3/site-packages
checking for path to Python.h... File "<string>", line 1
    from distutils.sysconfig import get_python_inc; print get_python_inc();
                                                                       ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax
"using "
checking python3.3/Python.h usability... no
checking python3.3/Python.h presence... no
checking for python3.3/Python.h... no
configure: error: cannot find python-devel support

Automatic:
Creating directory hplip-3.12.10a
Verifying archive integrity... All good.
Uncompressing HPLIP 3.12.10a Self Extracting Archive.....................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

[Amarnath Chitumalla (amarnath-chitumalla)]

Hi Hendrik Donner,

Seems like python 3 is being installed in your system. HPLIP is not yet supported the python-3.

Please install python-2.x (i.e. python 2.7 or some other 2.x version) and install HPLIP version.

And also
/usr/bin/python should link to python-2.x version instead of python-3.x version.

Thanks & Regards,
Amarnath

[Hendrik Donner (hendrik-donner)]

Hi,
well i actually have both python2 and python3 but /usr/bin/python is a symlink to python3:
ls -la | grep python
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 7 Sep 29 18:03 python -> python3*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Apr 24 2012 python2 -> python2.7*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 6248 Apr 24 2012 python2.7*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1618 Apr 24 2012 python2.7-config*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Apr 24 2012 python2-config -> python2.7-config*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 94 Oct 18 11:59 python2-pyuic4*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 9 Sep 29 18:03 python3 -> python3.3*
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 10376 Sep 29 18:03 python3.3*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Sep 29 18:03 python3.3-config -> python3.3m-config*
-rwxr-xr-x 2 root root 10376 Sep 29 18:03 python3.3m*
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1964 Sep 29 18:03 python3.3m-config*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Sep 29 18:03 python3-config -> python3.3-config*
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 14 Sep 29 18:03 python-config -> python3-config*

Please read http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0394/. It clearly states that /usr/bin/python can symlink to python3. That's why the Arch hplip package build script uses some sed magic:

sed -i '1s|#!/usr/bin/python|#!/usr/bin/python2|' setup.py makeuri.py logcapture.py base/magic.py
 sed -i '1s|#!/usr/bin/python|#!/usr/bin/python2|' ui/upgradeform.py uninstall.py upgrade.py config_usb_printer.py
 sed -i 's|python ./print.py|python2 ./print.py|' scan.py
 sed -i 's|python ./testpage.py|python2 ./testpage.py|' setup.py
 sed -i 's|python ./setup.py|python2 ./setup.py|' ui4/devmgr5.py ui4/nodevicesdialog.py
 sed -i 's|python %HOME%|python2 %HOME%|' base/utils.py
 sed -i 's|python ./plugin.py|python2 ./plugin.py|' base/pkit.py

The #!/usr/bin/python2 shebang is always the right thing to use for python2 code.

So changing that symlink might probably break my system, but let's have a try:

Automatic installer:
warning: CUPSEXT could not be loaded. Please check HPLIP installation.

Manuell installer:
./configure && make && make install work, however hp-setup errors out:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/local/bin/hp-setup", line 45, in <module>
    from base import device, utils, tui, models, module
  File "/usr/local/share/hplip/base/device.py", line 39, in <module>
    import status
  File "/usr/local/share/hplip/base/status.py", line 59, in <module>
    import hpmudext
ImportError: No module named hpmudext

and hp-check gives the same error as the automatic installer:
warning: CUPSEXT could not be loaded. Please check HPLIP installation.

I guess CUPS 1.6 is also unsupported?

[Hendrik Donner (hendrik-donner)]

Still an issue with the hplip 3.12.11 package from Arch, printer prints "**** Unable to open the initial device, quitting." as testpage and the plugin install fails.

And i don't know how to move on with the manual install (with moving my /usr/bin/python symlink to python2) due to the errors listed in the comment above.

Any ideas? Can anyone reproduce this?

[Hendrik Donner (hendrik-donner)]

Works again with the new hplip 3.13.2 release.