Problems encountered when compiling hplip

[January]

Hello,

please bear with me if you find these problems naive.

I would like to describe some minor issues that I encountered while compiling hplip from sources and suggest a few corrections.

My prerequisites: cups server running within a vserver. No development is supposed to be done on that server. No X access as well. Just a minimal installation with cups. vserver is Debian stable. The hplip package from Debian stable did not work properly (reports PCL errors, see question https://answers.launchpad.net/hplip/+question/17736

Here the installation steps that were required to configure hplip. I mark the problems / issues encountered with [!].

I first wanted to compile the package on a different host with a similar (but fuller) installation, and transfer all after compilation to the target host (vserver), and then run "make install" to complete the installation process.

1) downloading and unpacking hplip
[!] following files are missing in the hplip source tarball:
- README
- INSTALLATION

I have not noticed at first the directory "doc/". I know that this is a minor issue, but still it would be nice to have a README file (which is the first thing that you look for in a tarball)

2) configuring using ./configure: worked OK

3) make completed OK

4) make install (for testing) completed OK

5) transfer the source directory to the target using rsync (to make sure that all the date stamps are not changed)

6) make install on the target system (vserver): BUMMER
[!] make install seems to require all sorts of developer files, because it still compiles things. Why? All targets should have been compiled during "make" I thought?

7) downloaded all the required developer files to the target server using apt-get. OK, so I wanted to avoid this -- the production server is not supposed to be a development environment. It is stable, it works, many people rely on that, you are not supposed to meddle with it. But since it is a vserver, I can easily make a backup, fair enough.

8) tried to install using the HP installer.
[!] the command line installer actually tries to launch gnome-terminal. Which is not present on our target system, obviously. BUMMER.

9) used the manual installation.

10) running ./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-xml-install --enable-foomatic-ppd-install --with-hpppddir=/usr/share/ppd/hpijs/HP
[!] this does not work, since the vserver is not automagically recognized. Instead, I issued the command
./configure --prefix=/usr --disable-xml-install --enable-foomatic-ppd-install --with-hpppddir=/usr/share/ppd/hpijs/HP --build=i686-pc-linux-gnu

From this point, everything else smoothly, and the printer works. However, hp-check -t still gives me errors:

...
-----------
| SUMMARY |
-----------

error: 8 errors and/or warnings.

Summary of needed commands to run to satisfy missing dependencies:
su -c "modprobe ppdev"
su -c cp -f /etc/modules /etc/modules.hplip
echo ppdev | su -c tee -a /etc/modules
su -c "apt-get install --yes sane"

To resolve the first issue, I repeated the build process using the --disable-pp-build.
[!]However, I still get:

hp-check[18884]: info: :Checking for dependency: ppdev - Parallel port support kernel module....
error: NOT FOUND! This is a REQUIRED dependency. Please make sure that this dependency is installed before installing or running HPLIP.

Unless I can't read, this is a blatant lie. Moreover, I distinctly told him not to use pp. Furthermore, it works anyway.

[!] The other thing, suggestion to install sane, is also wrong, as the warning says that xsane is missing (and not sane).

But all in all, at least I have a working printer.

Cheers,
j.

[Aaron Albright (albrigha-deactivatedaccount)]

Sorry I'm not exactly clear what you are saying the problem is regarding. HPLIP does require the dev environment to compile, and isn't designed to be installed on a system that is missing it.

Regarding the ppdev, the hp-check doesn't have a check to see if pp was enabled during the install, however it perhaps should.

And you have a good point about the warning message for sane, the problem is that some distros call it sane and some xsane. /sigh

Thanks for your thoughts.

A

[Aaron Albright (albrigha-deactivatedaccount)]

Although your suggestions and thoughts are important and we appreciate it, this is classified as a bug and therefore currently invalid.