hplip issue during hp-setup - stuck at plugin install

[Mauro Gaspari]

Fresh install of Kubuntu 19.04
Installed hplip from repositories, available version is 3.19.1+dfsg0-1

When I start setup with hp-setup, this happens:
1. I am asked connection type. I select network ethernet
2. My printer is detected. I select it and hit next
3. I am told about the proprietary plugin to download. I confirm, accept download. I enter my user's password. I get a confirmation that the plugin is correctly Installed.
4. On next screen, I get a warning and cannot continue installation. I am told this printer needs a proprietary plugin to work correctly. After this I am stuck in a loop between points 3 and 4. I also tried to start hp-setup from super user on command line. but no way around this issue.

What I did next, I manually downloaded hplip-3.19.3.run from HP website. Removed version of hplip installed from repositories. Installed from manually downloaded package, followed the very same steps. Everything worked fine and printer is installed successfully.

I hope this information is useful.

[Mauro Gaspari (ilvipero)]

I re-created the same issue on another install, this time Ubuntu-Budgie 19.04.
Same issue happened, same solution fixed it.

Detailed steps I followed to fix the issue:

1. Go to https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing/gethplip .
2. Download latest version for Ubuntu . At the time of writing latest version is 3.19.3 .
3. Download hplip-3.19.3.run file, remember to change permissions to make it executable.
4. Remove hplip installed by your distribution repositories.
5. Download hplip-3.19.3-plugin.run and hplip-3.19.3-plugin.run.asc from https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing/plugins .
6. run hplip-3.19.3.run in a terminal, follow instructions on screen.
7. During printer setup process, when asked, always use interactive mode instead of gui. When asked for plugin, select path instead of download from server, provide path including full name of hplip-3.19.3-plugin.run .

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[whitefawn (whitefawn)]

Same issue on 18.04.
Can PGP server present a problem for users outside of USA?

[Mauro Gaspari (ilvipero)]

Additional Feedback.

I did a fresh install of ubuntu-budgie 19.04
1. installed hplip from repos (version 3.19.1)
2. ran hp-setup -i
3. went through the steps
4. install completed including plugin, can print and scan with no issue

[Andrey Vasilevsky (a.vasilevsky)]

The same problem with hplip-3.19.5.
Some notes from https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-software-2/hplip-keeps-looping-at-plug-in-installation-4175647505/ by user zaskar_84

1. hp-setup -g
2. got some messages like thise
"hp-setup[3796]: debug: Either /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/sane/hpgt2500_ntdcmsdll.so file is not present or symbolic link is missing"
"hp-setup[3796]: debug: Either /usr/lib64/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane/hpgt2500_ntdcmsdll.so file is not present or symbolic link is missing"
"hp-setup[3796]: debug: Either /usr/lib64/x86_64-linux-gnu/libjpeg.so.9 file is not present or symbolic link is missing"
and so on.
3. but you HAVE this files in system (in other places)
4. make missing dirs:
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu
/usr/lib64/x86_64-linux-gnu
5. make missing symlinks:
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/sane /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/sane
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/x86_64-linux-gnu /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu
sudo ln -s /usr/lib64/sane /usr/lib64/x86_64-linux-gnu/sane
6. install of hp-setup completed with plugin (use local downloaded hplip-3.19.5-plugin.run)

[Bruce Crowther (bwucie)]

Brilliant! Solved my problem.

Thank you.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

To the HP developers at HP:

Debian and Ubuntu (and perhaps also other modern Linux distributions) have multi-architecture support which allows installing libraries for different architectures on the same system (most prominently having also 32-bit i386 libraries on 64-bit amd64 systems). The libraries which got formerly installed into /usr/lib/ are now installed into /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu for the 64-bit amd64 versions of the library binaries, into /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu for the 32-bit i386 versions, ...

The proprietary plugin seems not to take account of this and searches for its libraries on hard-coded paths. Therefore adding the links as described in comment #6 solves the problem.

Could you make the plugin in a way that it either searches alternative paths or checks by environment variables whether the libraries are in multi-architecture sub-directories or at other alternative positions? This would make it much easier for users of Linux distributions to use the plugin with the distribution's packages of HPLIP.