printing not working after upgrade to 16.04

[Janos G. Komaromi]

Yesterday I completed distribution upgrade from 14.04 to 16.04. While it was a lengthy process everything seemed ok (even though I lost my background picture on desktop but later was able to restore it to what it was before upgrade).

However, today I tried to print something and it fails. I have an HP P1102w, and it worked perfectly before. I did all recommendations according to your wiki (network is OK, cups is seeing the printer, etc. etc.). I even deleted and reinstalled the printer, but when trying to print test page after installation an error shows up"hplip.plugin". I also reinstalled the hplip package but no help.

Does this have something to do with HP proprietary software and agreeing to some license blah-blah? I remember originally when I installed the printer in 14.04 there was something like that. Now everything is hidden behind the fancy gui stuff and I'm stuck with no printing.

I have another wireless printer, a Lexmark that I previously used as a shared printer from another linux box (where I was able to jury-rig the linux driver), and it worked well. Now I cannot use it, because there is a cups error: There was an error during the CUPS operation: 'Transport endpoint is not connected'. Again, now I have no printer at all.

My network is working well, I can see the other linux box or files on it, but cannot use the shared Lexmark color printer. I remember, during the upgrade there were some terminal messages that could not delete some cups orr ppd related directories, because they were not empty (apparently the script did not use the -rf option for rm). Could this have anything to do with my complete shut out of printing capability? Needless to say, I can print to both HP P1102w or Lexmark printers from the other linux box (an old Fedora-3 distro).

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Walter Tross (waltertross)]

I also upgraded from 14.04 to 16.04, and my HP Laserjet Pro P1102 (the same model as the HP P1102w, but without wireless connection) stopped working.
The print "Status" changes from "Processing" to "Stopped" after almost exactly 20 seconds (also when printing 1 line from gedit).
Very frustrating.

Output of dmesg:

[ 1068.448020] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci
[ 1068.580873] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=03f0, idProduct=002a
[ 1068.580879] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 1068.580882] usb 1-1: Product: HP LaserJet Professional P1102
[ 1068.580886] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
[ 1068.580889] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 000000000Q89BKK0SI1c
[ 1068.581414] usb-storage 1-1:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[ 1068.583109] scsi host9: usb-storage 1-1:1.0
[ 1069.593207] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 4
[ 1070.828021] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 5 using ehci-pci
[ 1070.960924] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=03f0, idProduct=002a
[ 1070.960930] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 1070.960934] usb 1-1: Product: HP LaserJet Professional P1102
[ 1070.960937] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: Hewlett-Packard
[ 1070.960941] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 000000000Q89BKK0PR1a
[ 1071.592257] usblp 1-1:1.0: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 5 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x03F0 pid 0x002A
[ 1071.592749] usbcore: registered new interface driver usblp
[ 1076.875087] usblp0: removed
[ 1076.881694] usblp 1-1:1.0: usblp0: USB Bidirectional printer dev 5 if 0 alt 0 proto 2 vid 0x03F0 pid 0x002A
[ 1185.607102] usblp0: removed

The last "usblp0: removed" is logged when the status is "Processing". Nothing is logged when the status changes to "Stopped".

Output of lsusb -v (afterwards):

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 03f0:002a Hewlett-Packard LaserJet P1102
Device Descriptor:
  bLength 18
  bDescriptorType 1
  bcdUSB 2.00
  bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level)
  bDeviceSubClass 0
  bDeviceProtocol 0
  bMaxPacketSize0 64
  idVendor 0x03f0 Hewlett-Packard
  idProduct 0x002a LaserJet P1102
  bcdDevice 1.00
  iManufacturer 1 Hewlett-Packard
  iProduct 2 HP LaserJet Professional P1102
  iSerial 3 000000000Q89BKK0PR1a
  bNumConfigurations 1
  Configuration Descriptor:
    bLength 9
    bDescriptorType 2
    wTotalLength 62
    bNumInterfaces 2
    bConfigurationValue 1
    iConfiguration 0
    bmAttributes 0xc0
      Self Powered
    MaxPower 98mA
    Interface Descriptor:
      bLength 9
      bDescriptorType 4
      bInterfaceNumber 0
      bAlternateSetting 0
      bNumEndpoints 2
      bInterfaceClass 7 Printer
      bInterfaceSubClass 1 Printer
      bInterfaceProtocol 2 Bidirectional
      iInterface 4 Printer
      Endpoint Descriptor:
        bLength 7
        bDescriptorType 5
        bEndpointAddress 0x01 EP 1 OUT
 ...

[Janos G. Komaromi (jankom)]

Printing finally works, but it was a lengthy and complicated process. Here are the steps I took, as best as I can remember:
(1) installed 16.04 on a different machine (virgin install) - so that I can find out what the real picture is
(2) ran gnome-software (because on the distro update this gnome-software command is not part of my gui menu, only the previous "Ubuntu Software Center" is there.
(3) downloaded recommended 16.04 missing software, including cups (in fact, I removed cups related software with synaptic package manager when printing did not work)
(4) Studied 16.04 wiki printing related stuff. Discovered that /etc/cups/cupsd.conf file did not exist on my machine, but there was a cupsd.conf.O file still there.
(5) Edited the cupsd.conf.O file according to wiki instructions and saved it without the .O tail; restarted cups service according to wiki.
(6) Now the cups web interface (127.0.0.1:631) worked, and the printer setting gui also worked.
(7) The rest of the stuff was the same as when I installed printers years back with the first installation of xubuntu, then 12.04. Because I have an HP Laserjet P1102w printer I had to run hp-plugin -i command from terminal in order to avoid gui printer setup error.
(8) I could also install my Lexmark color printer using samba network shared printer from my old Fc3 machine and selecting Generic Postscript driver. Same trick I did before because the Lexmark proprietary driver package installation did not work from Xubuntu. This was a workaround. My old Fc-3 linux machine shares the same Lexmark color printer to not only xubuntu bu also to old Windows machines as well.
F.Y.I. - hope this helps developers and others with similar problems
jankom