Lubuntu 11.10 does not print

[Filip Dominec]

=== Short description ===
The printer (HP LaserJet 1200) is not autodetected properly in Lubuntu 11.10. It reports on USB, but it does not print.

Manual printer settings do not make any change, nor with different drivers (CUPS+Gutenprint, Foomatic, HPLIP).

Maybe I just need your advice on diagnostics.

=== What i tried ===

Printing under Lubuntu 11.10 alpha 1 is broken. I had Ubuntu 10.10 before, and my HP LaserJet 1200 was working out-of-the-box. Now it is not.

1) After installing Lubuntu having the printer plugged in, the system choose tu use the "HP LaserJet 1200-CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.6 Simplified [en]" driver. A sample print job was queued as processing, but the printer did not do anything. The printer has status "Waiting for the printer to become available" (system-config-printer) and "File '/System/Library/ColorSync/Profiles/sRGB Profile.icc' not found" (in CUPS page at http://localhost:631).

1b) The same when I choose the "HP LaserJet 1200-CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.6 [en]" driver.

1c) I installed the "foomatic-filters-ppds" package. The printer still has status "Waiting for the printer to become available" (system-config-printer), but CUPS reports: "If you have more than one HP LaserJet 1200 printer connected to this machine, please recreate the print queues so that they get updated device URIs with serial numbers. Otherwise CUPS will not be able to distinguish them."

2) I removed the printer (at system-config-printer). I restarted CUPS (sudo /etc/init.d/cups restart).
Adding new printer was not automatic (!), I had to click Add Printer. Choose HP, "HP Lj1200 Foomatic/Postscript [en] (recommended)".

During adding in system-config-printer, the program printed out in the terminal:
"
**** Incorrect IEEE 1284 Device ID: [u'drv:///hpijs.drv/hp-laserjet_1200-hpijs-pcl3.ppd']
**** Actual ID is MFG:Hewlett-Packard;MDL:HP LaserJet 1200;
**** Please report a bug against the HPLIP component
**** Incorrect IEEE 1284 Device ID: [u'drv:///hpijs.drv/hp-laserjet_1200-hpijs-pcl3.ppd']
**** Actual ID is MFG:Hewlett-Packard;MDL:HP LaserJet 1200;
**** Please report a bug against the HPLIP component
"

The printer seems to be added successfully at a first glance, printing a test page marks the print job as "Finished". But the printer starts blinking green light as if it was receiving data and does nothing for at least half an hour.

3) After installing the "hplip" package, the printer adding behaves differently. It does not ask for the manufacturer and driver, but only for some details regarding page geometry and printer memory.

4) I tried the "hpijs pcl3" driver. The printer still behaves the same wrong way. It blinks, but does not print.

What shall I try next? (I did not try https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems#Capturing%20print%20job%20data yet).

=== I proceeded according to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems ===

filip@diana:~ $ lsmod | grep usb
usbhid 41905 0
hid 77367 1 usbhid

[printer offline]
filip@diana:~ $ dmesg > 2
[printer online]
filip@diana:~ $ dmesg > 3
filip@diana:~ $ diff 2 3
1396a1397
> [81962.804088] usb 3-1: new full speed USB device number 11 using uhci_hcd

filip@diana:~ $ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 005: ID 046d:c03e Logitech, Inc. Premium Optical Wheel Mouse (M-BT58)
Bus 003 Device 011: ID 03f0:0317 Hewlett-Packard LaserJet 1200

filip@diana:~ $ ls -l /dev/usb/lp* /dev/bus/usb/*/*
ls: nelze přistoupit k /dev/usb/lp*: Adresář nebo soubor neexistuje
crw-rw-r-- 1 root root 189, 0 2011-06-14 09:57 /dev/bus/usb/001/001
crw-rw-r-- 1 root root 189, 128 2011-06-14 09:57 /dev/bus/usb/002/001
crw-rw-r-- 1 root root 189, 256 2011-06-14 09:57 /dev/bus/usb/003/001
crw-rw-r--+ 1 root lp 189, 266 2011-06-16 15:23 /dev/bus/usb/003/011
crw-rw-r-- 1 root root 189, 384 2011-06-14 09:57 /dev/bus/usb/004/001
crw-rw-r-- 1 root root 189, 388 2011-06-16 15:22 /dev/bus/usb/004/005

filip@diana:~ $ sudo apt-get install hplip
filip@diana:~ $ hp-info -i

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.11.5)
Device Information Utility ver. 5.2

Copyright (c) 2001-9 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.

error: No device selected/specified or that supports this functionality.

filip@diana:~ $ sudo apt-get install foo2zjs
filip@diana:~ $ sudo usb_printerid /dev/bus/usb/003/011
Error: Inappropriate ioctl for device: GET_DEVICE_ID on '/dev/bus/usb/003/011'

[the same for other /dev/bus/usb/*/* files]

filip@diana:~ $ lpinfo -v
network ipp
direct scsi
network http
network beh
direct usb://HP/LaserJet%201200?serial=00CNBF531391
network lpd
network socket
direct parallel:/dev/lp0
direct hp:/usb/HP_LaserJet_1200?serial=00CNBF531391
network smb
direct hpfax

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Can you now, after having installed HPLIP, try to set up your printer again? Remove all its print queues and turn it off and on again. Does something happen? Does it get set up automatically?

If not, do

sudo apt-get install system-config-printer-udev

If a package gets installed, turn off and turn on your printer. Does it set up automatically?

If yes, try to print. Does it work?

If not, set up the printer with system-config-printer. Try Postscript as the driver at first, if this does not work, run

sudo apt-get install hplip-cups

Start system-config-printer again and try to set up your printer with hpcups as the driver. Does this work?

If all this does not work, please follow the instructions in the sections "CUPS error_log" and "Capturing print job data" in https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems

Please tell the results of everything you did here.

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

@Till:
I removed printer in system-config-printer, turned it on and connected. According to htop and my memory, the system-config-printer-udev was launched.

The printer was autodetected and its icon appeared in the system-config-printer window. Its driver is "HP LaserJet 1200 Postscript".

Printing a test page makes the printer blink green light for several minutes, but nothing probably happens. (Maybe I should wait longer, but yesterday it did not help.)

hplip-cups package is already present in version 3.11.5-1ubuntu1. I changed the printer driver to "HP LaserJet 1200 pcl3, hpcups 3.11.5 [en]". The printer now prints!

However it takes several minutes to load the data to the printer, both for Ubuntu test page, both for the command: 'echo "Já jsem malá žabička" | lpr'. The page probably gets rasterized at full resolution. How can this lag be avoided?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

The HP LaserJet 1200 has not very much memory. So it is very slow and easily fails with PostScript (here you really need memory). Also in PCL it is not very fast. "Draft" or "Normal" instead of high quality can make it somewhat faster. Check also your /var/log/cups/error_log whether there happened access failures to your printer.

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

@Till: I know the printer is not a pride of modern printing, but in Ubuntu 10.10 it worked fast with text pages (~5 seconds instead of ~5 minutes).

Therefore, the bug is not resolved yet. My aim is to make Lubuntu 1) add the printer automatically and 2) print fast as Ubuntu did.

The first objective is resolved by including hplip in the Lubuntu CD. I would be happy to read further advices.

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

Moreover, using the hplib driver, I get the following error report when running the system-config-printer:

filip@diana:~ $ system-config-printer
**** Incorrect IEEE 1284 Device ID: [u'hplip:0/HP/hp-laserjet_1200-ps.ppd', u'drv:///hpijs.drv/hp-laserjet_1200-hpijs-pcl3.ppd', u'drv:///hpcups.drv/hp-laserjet_1200-pcl3.ppd']
**** Actual ID is MFG:Hewlett-Packard;MDL:HP LaserJet 1200;
**** Please report a bug against the HPLIP component

Shall I file a new bug on launchpad?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

For Ubuntu and Lubuntu you can ignore this message about the device ID. system-config-printer has enough fuzzy matching to cope with that. You only need to take care that the default printer tool is system-config-printer and not the tool built into GNOME 3. In Ubuntu we will hide this new tool and put an icon calling system-config-printer into its place. Take care to overtake this from us.

You should report a bug about this to HPLIP upstream, via https://launchpad.net/hplip/.

For the speed problem please run "top" in a terminal window while doing a print job. Observe which processes, especially with the owners "lp" and "root" take up memory and CPU during the time between submission and completion. Post your results here.

During the last years several performance problems were found and fixed. Especially the Ghostscript version 9.03 which is currently under development and will get released in August has important fixes. Perhaps you should try a GIT snapshot of it in the course of your distro development and report your experience here.

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

OK, I will report the bug noted in #5 in upstream.

Using the "HP LaserJet 1200 pcl3, hpcups 3.11.5 [en]" or "HP LaserJet 1200 hpijs pcl3, 3.11.5 [en]" it takes 5 minutes "draft" and "high quality" mode to print. After initiating the print job "ls | lpr", there is little CPU activity caused by ghostscript, but then the print queue goes empty and nothing occupies CPU. The printer blinks for 5 minutes, then prints.

I observed the delay applies to the last page only. When a second job comes, it makes the printer print in few seconds.

However the last page gets "2345X@PJL SET PAGEPROTECT=AUTO" at the bottom and then sometimes a next page gets printed with "@PJL SET DENSITY=5 @PJL SE". I can print now, but the print driver hpcups is bugged.

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

Installation of dependencies and recompiling of hplip solved the problem. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/hplip/+bug/798596 for details.

This revealed a bug (?) in Lubuntu, as noted before:
1) hplip must be installed manually (and the system never tells the user to do this)
2) once installed using "sudo apt-get install hplip", it still misses some dependencies which causes it to delay the last page

Please fix it somehow or notify the hplip package mantainer.

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

The bug was tracked to be in the hplip package for ubuntu.