UberStudent Forums

Situation:
I need some help getting my new printer to work in Uberstudent.

Background:
Jump straight to the next reply where I will outline the "Problems" if you want to avoid wasting your time with my verbosity...

I decided to move over to free software for good, and my old printer multi-function centre is ready for the recycling centre anyway, so I bought a new one.

The old one: Brother MFC 5220CN does not like Linux, I found only one report on the net about an unsuccessful installation attempt. It does not print properly any more, I had to flash some code years ago to convince it that the spent ink deposit from cleaning is not over-full (but it is...) and I have refilled the cartridges probably 2 dozen times or so.

I did a little reading around and found out that different manufacturers have very different philsophies with regard to supporting free software. Hewlett Packard (HP) are putting in an effort to support free software, so I decided to buy from them.

However, a trip to the ink shop and a brief chat with the staff member there revealed that "Free Software" is coupled with "Captive Hardware" for want of a better word. HP have (for now) succeeded in their attempts to make it impossible to use generic ink cartridges in their printers, or to refill the cartridges with bulk ink.
The ink shop staff recommended Brother printers if ease of refilling cartridges is important to me, but Brother products are apparently difficult to get going in Linux systems.

I decided to put up with becoming a captive to original ink cartridges and took my now quite functional Uberstudent laptop into a shop to check out all HP printers on the shelves, using this web page: http://www.hplipopensource.com/hplip-we ... bined.html
The page lists the HPLIP software support for HP products. I was looking for something that allows scanning to PC and PC initiated faxing. I don't need those functions often, but it always seems to be something time critical when I do need them once a year or so.
Other criteria important to me were that no driver plug-in should be required and that the ink cartridges need to be separate black/cyan/magenta/yellow, to bring down costs.




I ended up buying the HP Officejet Pro 8610 because it ticks all those boxes, and is the cheapest in ink per page terms. According to the HP numbers on the back of their ink boxes and some calculations, it costs around 2.7 cent per page for ink. Ink for most other HP printers is much more expensive per page.

The first stages of printer setup went really well and I thought that's too easy.
The printer calibrated itself and printed a nice test page, and connecting it to my wireless network was super easy except for typing in a long hexadecimal password on the small touchscreen. It connected right away and appeared in Uberstudent>Applications>System>Hardware>Printers>Add>Network Printer>HP Officejet Pro 8610.

Now to the problems:
I think the problems are related to the very newness of the printer. The HPLIP included in Ubuntu and Uberstudent is a bit too old to cover this printer. I need version 3.14.6, and the one in Uberstudent is 3.14.3 .
I found this by following instructions from here: http://hplipopensource.com/node/306
and using this command:


I'll better start a new reply with the problem list before this gets much longer.

Now to the problems with the driver installation:

When I tried to continue on with the printer wizard at Uberstudent>Applications>System>Hardware>Printers>Add>Network Printer>HP Officejet Pro 8610
by clicking "Forward", this resulted in a failed attempt to install gutenprint. It hangs and crashes the entire computer, eventually.


When I try to install HPLIP 3.14.6 using the installer program from this page: http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/news.html , according to the instructions at: http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/in ... index.html , then the install fails due to 4 missing dependencies.



I have so far been unable to install the missing "cups devel" .

A hp icon has appeared in the top right status bar in Uberstudent, but it does not find the printer when I try to use the setup function.


So that's how far I got, any help would be much appreciated!

Since UberStudent is a derivative of Ubuntu/Xubuntu (which are derivatives of Debian), Ubuntu forums such as AskUbuntu.com often have useful information, especially concerning hardware issues. In Debian, Ubuntu, and UberStudent that 'cups-devel' package is called libcups2-dev. You will probably also need the libcupsimage2-dev package. You can install them with the following command:

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Thanks Damion!
I'll try that out.
Is there a list of "translations" between packages that use different names for the same dependencies? I guess I'll need it sooner or later.

libcups2-dev instead of cups-devel did the trick!

Now there are only three missing dependencies, but it will only tell me the first one missing, it's "libusb".

And guess what, sudo apt-get install libusb does not find it.

I googled around for a bit and then tried a lucky guess with sudo apt-get install libusb-dev, but there are still three missing dependecies now, so it did not work.

Instructions for how to do a manual HPLIP installation can be found there:
http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install/manual/distros/other.html
including the dependencies. I just need to figure out what they are called in Uberstudent.
The website even announces this:
"(Note: Your package names will vary depending on your Linux distribution. please refer to your Linux distribution documentation and/or support resources.)"

So here is the question I need to answer: Where is the documentation for Uberstudent....

It's not libdbus-1-dev , either.

Does it matter when I "sudo apt-get install" all sorts of stuff that I have no clue about?

sudo apt-get install libcupsimage2-dev brought it down to 2 missing dependencies, thank you!

But now I'll never know what they were, and the libusb dependency is still the one missing.

I'm working my way along likely-sounding candidates in this list:

found here: http://askubuntu.com/a/119713

I installed the lot of them, most were already up to date, but it appears that libusb was not one of them, it's still missing.

Found this: http://www.libusb.org/ and then tried "sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0.9" , but that does not work either.

Success: sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0 does the trick.

So libusb = libusb-1.0 (Uberstudent).

Now there are 3 optional dependencies and several required dependencies missing in the hplip installation process:
warning: There are 3 missing OPTIONAL dependencies.
note: Installation of dependencies requires an active internet connection.
warning: Missing REQUIRED dependency for option 'network': libnetsnmp-devel (libnetsnmp-devel - SNMP networking library development files)
warning: This installer cannot install 'libnetsnmp-devel' for your distro/OS and/or version.
warning: Option 'network' has been turned off.
warning: Missing REQUIRED dependency for option 'scan': sane-devel (SANE - Scanning library development files)
warning: This installer cannot install 'sane-devel' for your distro/OS and/or version.
warning: Option 'scan' has been turned off.
warning: Missing OPTIONAL dependency for option 'scan': xsane (xsane - Graphical scanner frontend for SANE)
warning: This installer cannot install 'xsane' for your distro/OS and/or version.

Despite of the above missing dependencies, installation did progress and finish, but the printer is still not being detected.

And then...while shutting down the numerous tabs still open from my disorganised search, I found an open tab with this site: http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/in ... buntu.html
Now "sh hplip-3.14.6.run" works like a charm!
And the printer has been found and is setting up!
Test page printed, seems like it's all good now.

So here is the 'How to set up a HP Officejet Pro 8610 in Uberstudent" :

1) Go to http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/in ... buntu.html and run the code


Do not continue to follow the complex process of steps 3 etc on that page (configure, run make, make install etc) but continue the Installer Walkthrough descibed here: http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/in ... index.html from step 1 as if your OS was Ubuntu.
1) Download the installer file http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/hpli ... 3.14.6.run
2) Run the automatic installer after changing directory into the location where you saved it, for example the desktop:

Follow the prompts in the terminal.

I hope that's all that's required, but am by no means certain. Some of my preliminary "stab-in-the-dark" steps might actually have been useful, but maybe not.

I'll try this out on another Uberstudent laptop soon and report back if it works.

Since UberStudent is a derivative of Ubuntu/Xubuntu, the vast majority of its package names are inherited directly from Ubuntu; indeed, the majority of UberStudent's packages are downloaded from the Ubuntu repositories. The percentage of package names inherited from Ubuntu increases to 100% when discussing just packages related to hardware [such as printers and scanners]. What this means is that to find a package name for UberStudent, what you are usually looking for is the package name for Ubuntu (which is why I suggested Ubuntu forums such as AskUbuntu.com).

Another resource for finding package names is the Synaptic Package Manager, located under Applications > System > Software. For package names, I recommend utilizing the various Ubuntu forums first and Synaptic second.

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