hp-check crashes in Lucid

[Zoubidoo]

hp-check should not crash, but either function or return an error message.

$ sudo hp-check
error: Unable to locate models.dat file

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 0.0.0)
Dependency/Version Check Utility ver. 14.3

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.

Note: hp-check can be run in three modes:
1. Compile-time check mode (-c or --compile): Use this mode before compiling the
HPLIP supplied tarball (.tar.gz or .run) to determine if the proper dependencies
are installed to successfully compile HPLIP.
2. Run-time check mode (-r or --run): Use this mode to determine if a distro
supplied package (.deb, .rpm, etc) or an already built HPLIP supplied tarball
has the proper dependencies installed to successfully run.
3. Both compile- and run-time check mode (-b or --both) (Default): This mode
will check both of the above cases (both compile- and run-time dependencies).

Saving output in log file: hp-check.log

Initializing. Please wait...
-Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/hp-check", line 206, in <module>
    core.init()
  File "/usr/share/hplip/installer/core_install.py", line 410, in init
    self.distro_name = self.distros_index[self.distro]
KeyError: 0

$ sudo cat hp-check.log
hp-check[2351]: info: :
Initializing. Please wait...
Ubuntu

10.04

scheduler is running

$

$ dpkg -l 'hplip*'
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Cfg-files/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-=============================-=============================-==========================================================================
ii hplip 3.10.2-2ubuntu2 HP Linux Printing and Imaging System (HPLIP)
un hplip-base <none> (no description available)
un hplip-cups <none> (no description available)
ii hplip-data 3.10.2-2ubuntu2 HP Linux Printing and Imaging - data files
ii hplip-dbg 3.10.2-2ubuntu2 HP Linux Printing and Imaging - debugging information
un hplip-doc <none> (no description available)
un hplip-gui <none> (no description available)
un hplip-ppds <none> (no description available)

[Mayou36 (mayou36)]

Same on Ubuntu 17.04

tried reinstalling several times