HP DeskJet 5550 not supported in Hardy

[Michael Marley]

Binary package hint: hpijs

In Ubuntu hardy, or more precisely Kubuntu hardy, with all updates applied, there is no driver on the system for the HP Deskjet 5550 printer. I have tried both KDE Print and the new System-Config-Printer. KDE print does not have the driver, and I could not get System-Config-Printer to work at all. This is an obvious regression from Gutsy, which had the driver working properly.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Problem here is that HPLIP has moved PPD generation from Foomatic to the CUPS DDK. The KDE Printing Manager does not support the new PPD generator concept of CUPS 1.2 (PPD generators in /usr/lib/cups/driver/) as it does not ask CUPS for existing PPDs. It looks for physical PPD files and it looks directly into the Foomatic XML database. So it does not find the HPLIP PPDs which are generated by /usr/lib/cups/driver/drv.

Solutions are:

1. (Preferred) Make system-config-printer for KDE actually working and configure the desktop that system-config-printer is used by default.

2. Make the KDE Printing Manager dependent on the hpijs-ppds package, so that ready-made PPDs are there (AFAIR we went for this solution also with Gutenprint)

I have checked in the GNOME version of system-config-printer and there the DeskJet 5550 is listed.

[Michael Marley (mamarley)]

Thanks for the quick reply, but I am setting up a samba printer. The System-Config-Printer does absolutely nothing after I put in the server and workgroup info...

[Michael Marley (mamarley)]

Additionally, I have installed the hpijs-ppds package (as recommended by an unrelated forum post), and nothing happened.

[Jonathan Riddell (jr)]

Unfortunately System-Config-Printer-kde is not yet complete and only supports local printers (which will be autoconfigured). For hardy you would need to use System-Config-Printer-gnome for Samba printers I'm afraid.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Jonathan, I think we cannot stay this way for general use. What about keeping KDE Printing Manager the default printer toool but adding the hpijs-ppds package to the Kubuntu desktop seed so that the HP PPDs appear in KDE Printing Manager?

[Michael Marley (mamarley)]

As I said earlier, I installed the hpijs-ppds package, but it still does not add a printer driver for the DJ 5550.

[Till Kamppeter (till-kamppeter)]

Jonathan, is KDE Printing Manager patched to search for PPDs in /usr/share/ppd instead of /usr/share/cups/model (or better in both)? Otherwise Kubuntu users will not have access to any ready-made PPD.

[Ryan Novosielski (novosirj)]

I have the same problem with a DeskJet 932C. It appears that the hpijs-ppds package does not put these files in a place where the Printing Manager can find them. I installed them as "Other..." and found the PPD by hand.

There are other problems, though, regarding a missing foomatic-rip-hplip filter that CUPS needs. I'm filing a separate bug for that. This one is pretty serious, and probably has a simple fix.

[Jonathan Riddell (jr)]

A fresh hardy install now includes Desktop 5550 and DeskJet 932C in the list of available drivers in System Settings Printer.

[Ryan Novosielski (novosirj)]

I can confirm this on a non-fresh install of Hardy as well. Both are listed.