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I have been searching for an answer for days now, thought it was time to ask! I have just setup my first ubuntu server, everything is working perfect. I have internet connection, I can ping every computer on our network but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to add a network attached printer under CUPS or HPLIP.

I have two HP printers, one attached to a computer at 192.168.1.8 and one attached to a computer at 192.168.1.24. We have 8 windows computers on our network, every one of them can find, view and print. I can ping both of these IP addresses successfully from the ubuntu box, why can I not get these printers to work?

HPLIP returns:

warning: No devices found on the 'net' bus. If this isn't the result you are expecting,
warning: check your network connections and make sure your internet
warning: firewall software is disabled.

Find New Printers button on CUPS returns: No printers found.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

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  • You menitoned that they are connected to computers, are you sharing them from those computers? Also, I think the HPLIP network stuff only works for HP printers that are connected directly to the network
    – tgm4883
    Jan 27, 2013 at 0:09
  • @tgm4883 Yes, they are connected to windows computers and fully shared. (All other computers on the network can see the printers and print to them) They are also both HP printers, a LaserJet Pro 400 and a LaserJet 1102.
    – user1796225
    Jan 27, 2013 at 12:09

5 Answers 5

Reset to default
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This is how I have my Ubuntu systems print to a Windows-connected printer:

  1. Make sure that you have smbclient installed (sudo apt-get install smbclient);
  2. Open System Settings / Printers / Add printer;
  3. Choose "Windows-printer via Samba". At this point you should be able to search through the network for printers by means of the "Browse" button. If the Browse-button is greyed out, and displays a message about "pysmbc not installed" when you hover over it, you are hit by this bug. In that case, you will need to specify the correct host name and share name (you can find these on the Windows machine). Press Next.
  4. Choose HP from the list and press Next.
  5. Choose the correct model name from the list.
  6. Fill in a user-friendly name.

Done.

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  • $ sudo apt install smbclient $ sudo usermod -aG lpadmin <username> $ sudo apt install python3-smbc This worked for me as well. Thanks Jos
    – Lorberta
    Oct 11, 2022 at 8:10
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I was having the same problem. Then I realized I was connected to a VPN which prevented CUPS from finding my network printer. When I disconnected from the VPN the printer came up in the CUPS prompt.

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I don't know if this will help, but I am printing on a home network to an HP printer with CUPS, with the server being ubuntu desktop rather than ubuntu server. The way I did this was :

A. On the server machine

  1. System settings > printers
  2. In the new window, on the menu at very top of screen : server > settings
  3. In the new window, tick the box "publish shared printers connected to this system" and click OK
  4. In the first window, right click on the printer icon and ensure "shared" is ticked.

B. On the client machine

  1. System settings > printers

  2. Click "add" box, "network printer", "find network printer" and the server's printer was there.

  3. Select it, click "forward", and ensure it uses CUPS (ipp://).

Ubuntu server may be completely different, and I am not using HPLIP, but there may be similarities.

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I was having similar problems. HPLIP was not able to find a printer on the network. The difference was that I have a network printer and not one shared as a window share connected to a computer.

The trick with me was to enter the IP of a printer at the finding process. I believe you should also enter an IP of your host computer before the start of finding the printer. The printer adding application will look only ad the specified IP address. It worked for me and I also found some other similar cases.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkPrintingWithUbuntu#Printing_from_Ubuntu

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2171712

http://www.digitalcitizen.life/how-access-windows-shared-printer-ubuntu

I believe you should connect with SMB protocol, so your printer address would be smb://computer/printer. Maybe you could also try entering the whole printer address manually if the finding process really can't find anything.

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I would like to add to birdy's answer. I am connecting via VPN to a university campus. The connection has two options: campus and external. The former routes all connections via VPN, the latter -- only those inside the university. Naturally if the connection is set to campus, it cannot find my local network printer. The USB scanner also malfunctioned, which is weird. Setting the connection to external fixed the problem. Both the network printer and the USB scanner work perfectly with VPN on.

Thanks to birdy for pointing to VPN as a source of the problem!

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