Comment 2 for bug 26570

Forwarding this, since it was erroneously sent to me rather than to
Launchpad.

----- Forwarded message from <email address hidden> -----

Date: Sat, 01 Apr 2006 01:24:11 +0000
From: <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: Re: [Bug 26570] Re: hplip installation error

Matt;

I'm sorry but I don't know for sure. I had it written down on some scrap paper,
but no longer have the information as this was ~2-3 months ago. I searched
Ubuntu bugzilla on hplip and reviewed all the bugs there. It appears that #3841
is the issue I raised.

FYI, I did also file the bug with Debian as Debian is Ubuntu-based and I was not
sure if the bug was in Ubuntu-specific code or in Debian-specific code. I
receive a highly critical response from a Debian developer, (whose name I don't
recall) slamming me for filing a bug in both places. Since I was using Ubuntu
his position was that the bug should have been filed with Ubuntu only, and the
Ubuntu team would escalate it to Debian as needed and as appropriate. Now I know
the process and have had my hand slapped, I won't make that mistake again.

Anyways, in his response, he indicated that it wasn't a defect. Specifically I
indicated that hplip must start before cupsys in order for cupsys to find hplip
and use it correctly but if you look at /etc.rd you can see that hplip is
starting after cupsys. My basis for my claim of what the correct start order
must be is that I read in one of the hplip release note documents on sourceforge
that this was a requirement. The document was written by HP so I assume it is
authoritative.

A digression: I was having nothing but trouble trying to get 3 different HP
printers working with Ubuntu when linuxprinting.org said all should work just
fine out of the box. That caused me to really dig into info on hplib and hpijs.
That's where I found HP documentation which I read VERY carefully. I also
searched my filesystem and found the file:

/usr/share/doc/hplip/README.Debian file

I believe this is the file where I found the startup sequencing notes. this is
what caused me to submit the bug.

That said, the Debian developer said that even though I was correct in noting
the actual service load order, that it appeared to him that code in hplip was
actually causing cupsys to restart, thus the actual start sequence is
cupsys-hplip-cupsys, i.e. the official startup sequence is cupsys followed by
hplip, but then hplip restarts cupsys.

I have no way of verifying if what the Debian developer said is true, as I'm not
that Linux-savvy.

All that said, this never did solve my problem, I never hot the HP printers
working and ended up using a Brother printer that actually worked.

It was incredibly frustrating to me that I was unable to get any of 3 different
HP printers that all should have worked flawlessly out of the box to work with
Ubuntu. If you search the Ubuntu forums on my posts (blair) or hplip, you will
find tons of posts by people with HP printers that linuxprinting.or says should
work perfectly, yet literally hundreds of users are saying it doesn't. And if
you look at all
the dozens of suggestions on how to make the printers work, A) none of them are
right and B) the fact that the suggestions are all over the map means nothing
that obviously should work does actually work, reducing people to trying any and
every possible hack they can think of. None of these suggestions worked for me
and you will see by the liberal number of posts I made on the Ubuntu forums that
I worked pretty damn hard at this for literally weeks, ultimately to no avail.

HP is clearly the biggest supporter of Linux in the printer peripheral market
and HP undisputably has the largest market share. If Ubuntu can't make reliably
make HP printers work out of the box, every time, Ubuntu's prognosis as a
mainstream distribution for the masses and Windows converts is pretty poor.

I appreciate that the Ubuntu team is probably working incredibly hard, but it
just needs to work out of the box, and in many cases, particularly in the area
of HP printers, it simply does not.

If there is anything I can help to solve that problem, I will be happy to
assist. I will happily take a test PC or two and I can provide 2-3 different HP
printers that linuxprinting.org all says should work "perfectly" and perform any
tests or config changes you want and do a methodical walkthrough of every
possible "try this and see if it works" combination or permutation you can think
of. Ideally, we would find the combination of system settings required to make
it work, and then you could provide feedback into the team on what needs to
happen on default installations, or default configuration settings in order to
make more HP printers get correctly detected, configured and usable the first
time, every time. Your findings could ultimately benefit liuterally tens of
thousands of users.

Please let me know what if anything I can do to assist.

Thanks,

Blair Nicodemus
 -------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Matt Zimmerman <email address hidden>
> What is the bug number of the Debian bug you filed?
>
> ** Changed in: hplip hplip-base (Ubuntu)
> Assignee: (unassigned) => Matthias Klose
> --
> hplip installation error
> https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/26570

----- End forwarded message -----

--
 - mdz