Deskjet 930c prints only head alignment printout

[Spyros Melcher]

Printer worked fine in the past with various distros, including current one (Sidux 2009-1 fully up-to-date, basically debian sid), still works under windows.

I recently discovered that it won't print anymore. Did various tests with new users, using root user etc, found out that it will only print when instructed to align its heads. In that case it will correctly print out the classic head alignment page. In any other case, as soon as a printing job gets sent to the printer, the HP device manager will report a communication error (which will eventually stay that way until the printing job is cancelled), it will not print anything and the print jobs will just hang in the printing queue indefinitely. This behaviour is the same regardless of a) the driver used (tried hpijs, gutenprint, foomatic/cdj550), b) the environment under which the printer is set up (HP device manager, CUPS web interface), c) the user.

Unfortunately, I don't print very often with this pritner, so I could not tell whether this is an issue that appeared with latest hplip package. I do know however that this printer worked fine at least until March 2009.

On another note, although much less disturbing (and probably subject to a separate bug report), the HP device manager will ask for a "password for user XXX on localhost" as soon as one tries to cancel a print job or delete a printer. However this password will not match neither the current user password nor the root password, so it keeps popping up indefinitely. Doing the same job through CUPS web interface works just fine.