hplip delays last page on LaserJet 1200

[Filip Dominec]

This bug was first described here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+bug/798229, where can be found many (useless) details.

The conclusion is that in Lubuntu 11.10 alpha 1, after (required!) manual install of hplip driver, the printer HP LaserJet 1200 behaves oddly.

When printing an e. g. two-page document (from LibreOffice), the first page is printed instantly, but the last page always has to wait for 5 minutes to be printed. The printer green LED flashes during this time and no CPU activity occurs. After 5 minutes the last page gets printed properly.

There is a way to "push" all the wanted pages to be printed without waiting: print an empty page after them. Then two extra pages get printed, one with "2345X@PJL SET PAGEPROTECT=AUTO" at the bottom and then one additional page with "@PJL SET DENSITY=5 @PJL SE" at the top.

I am using "HP LaserJet 1200 pcl3, hpcups 3.11.5 [en]" driver on Lubuntu 11.10 alpha 1.

[goutam kodu (goutam-hplip)]

Hi,

Please can you post the output of "hp-check -t" command.

Thanks & Regards,
Goutam Kodu

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

Hi, the output of the "sudo hp-check -t" command is appended. It was ran when my printer was connected and the "... hpcups 3.11.5" driver was selected.

[goutam kodu (goutam-hplip)]

Hi,

Currently hplip-3.11.5 package has compatibility with latest release of Ubuntu 11.04. You can check the same at http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install.html.

hplip package requires some dependencies to be installed to function properly. The hp-check output shows several missing dependencies.

Can you follow the link http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install/manual/distros/ubuntu.html to manually install hplip-3.11.5 from hplip-3.11.5.tar.gz. It has the instructions to manually install the dependencies too.

After the installation. Please post us the "hp-check -t" output and let us know if the issue is same.

Thanks & Regards,
Goutam Kodu

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

I removed all hpcups packages (sudo apt-get remove hplip hplip-cups hplip-data) and proceeded exactly as is suggested in hplipopensource.com website.

The printer then reported "Stopped - Filter "/usr/lib/cups/filter/hpcups" for printer (...) not available (...)". I removed the printer from system-config-printer and tried to add it.

Now the "Add printer dialog" showed two printers connected to USB! One was "Hewlett Packard HP LaserJet 1200 (...)", the second was only "HP LaserJet 1200 (...)". I think the first one is the newly added, so I chose this.

I went through the printer driver selection and had the same (?) options as before compilation. I chose the "HP LaserJet 1200 pcl3, hpcups 3.11.5 [en]" driver again.

Now the printer works as expected, no delay before the last page!

I include the "hp-check -t" command output.

[goutam kodu (goutam-hplip)]

Hi Filip

Thanks for let us know on the same. Re-installation of hplip-3.11.5 has solved the problem for you. Marking this bug as invalid as there require no code change to solve this problem. The hplip support for ubuntu 11.10 will be available when Ubuntu 11.10 is officially released.

Thanks & Regards,
Goutam Kodu

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

I still do not understand what happened here. There was a new bugged release of hplip in may 2011, which caused the printer to delay printing, but it was resolved recently?

[goutam kodu (goutam-hplip)]

Hi,

You can clearly see in the hp-check output that you had attached me previously had lot of missing dependencies. After installing those dependencies and manually installing hplip-3.11.5 has resolved your problem. This is not the bug with hplip.

Thanks,
Goutam Kodu

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

I see.

I used fresh install of Lubuntu 11.10 alpha 1. Therefore, there is a bug in Lubuntu in missing dependencies of the hplip package. However, these dependencies are probably not in the dependencies list of the package (otherwise I would install them when I was manually installing hplip).

The hplip package maintainer should be aware of this.

[goutam kodu (goutam-hplip)]

Hi,

The dependencies are listed in the dependency list of hplip package. Auto installation of hplip-3.11.5 package from "hplip-3.11.5.run" file found at http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/gethplip.html does all the installation of the dependency.

I had mentioned in the earlier post that hplip has not given auto installation support for Ubuntu 11.10 as it has not yet been released officially. So i would have to direct you to this link http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install/manual/distros/ubuntu.html to do the manual installation of hplip along with the dependencies.

The hplip , hplip-cups package that are shipped from synaptic package manager by Ubuntu are .deb packages (binaries) which does not handle resolving these dependencies.

Let me know if you need any more info. Thanks for your interest.

Thanks & Regards,
Goutam Kodu

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

For me it looks a littele like that your computer was not running D-Bus.

On Ubuntu there are meta packages which depend on all packages which should be included in a standard installation. With this some packages which HPLIP needs are already there even if they are not in the dependency lists of HPLIP's binary packages. This is probably the reason why it works under Ubuntu and not under Lubuntu.

Please check and please tell me which dependencies are exactly missing and in which binary packages of the Debian/Ubuntu package of HPLIP and I will add them.

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

The hplip compilation, which resolved the problem, required also installation of these dependencies:
libcups2 cups libcups2-dev cups-bsd cups-client libcupsimage2-dev libdbus-1-dev build-essential ghostscript openssl libjpeg62-dev libsnmp-dev libtool libusb-dev python-imaging policykit-1 policykit-1-gnome python-qt4 python-qt4-dbus python-dbus python-gobject python-dev python-notify python python-reportlab libsane libsane-dev sane-utils xsane

At least one of them is necessary for Lubuntu to print properly. On the other hand installing all these packages in Lubuntu would inflate it by 50+ MB. It would also bring in applications, that are not intended to: such as python-qt4, xsane etc.

However I don't want to test all these manually. Each step would require uninstalling and reinstalling several packages and test printing, which can take really a long time.

-> Please, can you point me to the package which is the most probable reason for this Lubuntu printing bug?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

I would primarily bet on missing D-Bus.

To the developers at HP, do you have any suggestion on how to find out which missing dependency caused this printing problem?

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

I cannot reproduce the problem, at least trying things like stopping the D-Bus (in addition kill all D-Bus processes) or killing hp-systray.

What you should try is to do a clean standard installation of Lubuntu, then install the HPLIP package of Lubuntu and set up a print queue for your printer, with the hpcups driver. After that try to print, inmstall one of the needed dependencies, try to print again, ... and so forth until you are able to print. Please tell here which is the dependency which did the trick for you.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for hplip (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[rpr nospam (rpr-nospam)]

I have a very similar problem with printing to HP LaserJet 1200 with
PS driver. The printer was first installed on Ubuntu 10.10 and worked
fine, also after upgrade to Ubuntu 11.04.

But after upgrade to Ubuntu 11.10 the last page of the document never
gets printed: green light is blinking as if the printer is receiving
data and after a few minutes it turns off but the last page does not
get printed.

Here are versions of packages:

Linux pc-rpr-03 3.0.0-14-generic #23-Ubuntu SMP Mon Nov 21 20:28:43 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

ii hplip 3.11.7-1ubuntu3.1
ii hplip-cups 3.11.7-1ubuntu3.1
ii hplip-data 3.11.7-1ubuntu3.1

ii bluez-cups 4.96-0ubuntu4
ii cups 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii cups-bsd 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii cups-client 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii cups-common 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii cups-driver-gutenprint 5.2.7-2ubuntu4
ii cups-pk-helper 0.1.2-1
ii cups-ppdc 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii ghostscript-cups 9.04~dfsg-0ubuntu11.3
ii hplip-cups 3.11.7-1ubuntu3.1
ii libcups2 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii libcups2:i386 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii libcupscgi1 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii libcupsdriver1 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii libcupsimage2 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii libcupsimage2:i386 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii libcupsmime1 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii libcupsppdc1 1.5.0-8ubuntu6
ii python-cups 1.9.59-0ubuntu0.2
ii python-cupshelpers 1.3.6+20110831-0ubuntu9.4

hp-check.log is attached.

[Filip Dominec (fdominec)]

rpr nospam: Now i am using the driver "HP LaserJet 1200 Foomatic/pxlmono (recommended)" in Ubuntu 11.10 and the printer works properly. HTH.

[rpr nospam (rpr-nospam)]

I have tried the "HP LaserJet 1200 Foomatic/pxlmono (recommended)" driver with this printer on an Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit but to no avail.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

rpr nospam, your problem does not seem to be a driver problem but a problem of the communication between computer and printer via USB.

Can you make sure that your system is completely updated?

Can someone at HP look into this? There seems to be a problem with the "hp" CUPS backend.

[rpr nospam (rpr-nospam)]

I'm sure there is no problem with communication between PC and the printer via USB.
The PC I tried last has dual boot configuration: MS Windows XP Pro. SP3 32-bit and Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit.
With the printer connected to the PC on a USB port I first booted Ubuntu and found out that there is a problem with printing as described above.
Then rebooted in Windows XP (without any reconnection or resetting the printer) and found out that there is no problem with printing (in XP a PS driver is used).

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

I do not mean any hardware defect or incompatibility, but perhaps there is a bug in the Linux kernel or in HP's 'hp" CUPS backend and this breakls the USB communication.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for hplip (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[rpr nospam (rpr-nospam)]

I can confirm that the problem with printing to HP LaserJet 1200 with PS driver has been fixed after upgrade to Ubuntu 12.04 (with packages hplip 3.12.2-1ubuntu3 and cups 1.5.2-9ubuntu1).