42

After installing 20.04 on my desktop, my printer has stopped working.

Printer: HP Envy 5640, connected via USB. hplip installed. cups installed.

Any suggestions appreciated. Printer itself is OK as I have used it wirelessly to print from another PC on the network.

5
  • 6
    There are a lot of other people complaining about printer driver issues in 20.04 here as well May 9, 2020 at 13:03
  • 3
    Any printers brand known to work seamlessly across modern Ubuntu versions? The time spent on hacking my HP printer is simply not worth it ....
    – matanox
    Aug 27, 2020 at 10:44
  • 2
    @therobyouknow absolutely how I feel about this exact problem right now. Signed, someone who is missing out on spending time with their family because they're now fighting Ubuntu when they just needed to print something (urgently)
    – 8bitjunkie
    Feb 20, 2021 at 15:48
  • +1 thank you so much @8bitjunkie I feel your pain as you have mine. I have good regard generally for CUPS - the Common Unix Printing System & hopeful that issue is resolved but needn't have happened in the first place,of course. Writing tests, test code, and test results should be part of the development process and stored alongsie the source code in version control. I'd have thought devs working on 20.04 ought to know dependencies that would be impacted by changes between 18.04 and 20.04, inc printing, so again my previous comments stand - thank u for support & hope it works out for you soon! Feb 21, 2021 at 14:00
  • This got my printer working on Ubuntu: askubuntu.com/questions/1296010/…
    – Ryan
    Aug 31, 2021 at 22:33

14 Answers 14

32

Try sudo hp-setup -i. At least for USB. That finally helped me with a HP LaserJet Pro P1102w.

6
  • that 'd explained a lot about why in my case the printer was printing after a 20.04 fresh install (was on & plugged during install) and this although many dependencies were missing for hplib, but not after deleting the printer & trying to reinstall it the normal way (not in admin mode) with all dependencies installed. will check tomorrow (pc not with me) but pretty sure that'll do it for me, thanks in advance !
    – mikakun
    Jun 17, 2020 at 22:46
  • 1
    Can't believe this worked after so much other tinkering! it now says the printer queue is "driverless" but it just makes the printer do its job ...
    – matanox
    Aug 27, 2020 at 10:48
  • This is the correct answer. The problem with Ubuntu 20.04 and later versions (as of 2021-03-07) was that it could automatically detect many HP printers and would set them up automatically using the driverless mode, leading to frustration. Instead, Ubuntu should automatically run "hp-setup" when it detects the printer.
    – Yan Li
    Mar 7, 2021 at 17:41
  • the best. it should be the accepted answer! Dec 20, 2021 at 16:26
  • This doesn't work unless snmp is installed. Dec 31, 2022 at 18:07
13

If the printer was working for you with hplip before, just uninstall ippusbxd package:

sudo apt remove ippusbxd

The problem, at least in my case, was that ippusbxd was automatically creating a printer that was not working and was conflicting with my hplip printer.

4
  • 1
    Thank-you very, very much. This was the cause of a 'Printer Busy' problem which plagued me for MONTHS after I installed Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS by preventing correct wireless installation and hp-toolbox deployment. Did I say thank-you?
    – Bad Loser
    Aug 21, 2020 at 3:30
  • Running sudo hp-setup -i and changing the permissions of the ppd file didn't help (on their own), this did!
    – oulenz
    Oct 13, 2020 at 9:10
  • Ubuntu Mate; recent upgrade to 20.04, Dell printer. This single step (remove ippusbxd) plus a reset and the queued job printed automatically.
    – Mrnatural
    Nov 18, 2020 at 23:10
  • This did not work for me. Dec 31, 2022 at 18:07
7
  1. install hplip gui as below

    sudo apt install hplip-gui
    
  2. from hplip gui go to actions and then install required plugin.

And this fixed it for fr model HP LasetJet 1018

0
6

I have solved with the following steps, don't know if all are required, most likely only step 3 is the fix.

  1. Removed and reinstalled some packages:

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get remove hplip cups-filters cups hplip-data system-config-printer-udev
    sudo apt-get install build-essential tix groff dc axel cups
    sudo apt-get install cups-filters unp system-config-printer-gnome
    
  2. installed hplip from the hp's Developer Portal: https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing/gethplip

    ver 3.20.5 claims to be compatible with 20.04 but in my case was not solving the issue:

  3. Finally, changing permissions to the ppd file:

    sudo chmod 644 /etc/cups/ppd/HP_ENVY_4520_series_XXXXXX_.ppd 
    

    where (i suppose) XXXXXX should be part of the serial number of the printer

Now the printer works fine. It took me several days to achieve this result, the printer was working perfectly on 19.10, so I am a little disappointed of this issue.

2
  • this did not work for me,using the exact same printer and connected via usb.i hope this get fixed in the updates soon i have never had this problem in any version of ubuntu i started with 9.04 and is at 20.04 now. May 20, 2020 at 15:29
  • Worked perfectly on my Ubuntu 20.04.1 LTS machine connected wirelessly to an HP OfficeJet Pro 9010 series All in one printer. Thanks for your help on this!
    – user99513
    Jul 24, 2020 at 12:04
4

So I had this problem for awhile and tried many of the solutions posted above but they just didn't work for me (as written) but I was able to mix and match them to come up with this solution. I am using an HP Deskjet 3520.

  1. I started with Ubuntu 20.04.01. The original release, not the 20.04.03 version currently out.
  2. I immediately ran sudo apt remove ippusbxd
  3. Next I deleted all printers from my computer and then unplugged and restarted the printer.
  4. I then ran sudo hp-setup -i
  5. The printer now works but I wanted to upgrade to Ubuntu 21.04 today (which I assume the following would work for any upgrade)
  6. Upgrade to whichever version you want using the built in software updater
  7. Printer will no longer work.
  8. I then ran sudo apt remove ipp-usb <- note that this is different from step 2 above
  9. I then deleted all printers from my computer and then unplugged and restarted the printer.
  10. I then ran sudo hp-setup -i
  11. Printer worked..

For the heck of it, I decided to upgrade to 21.10 right afterwards and the printer just worked. Hopefully these steps help because it was a pain to figure them out.

1

No end of pain but got my LaserJet p1102w working on fresh install xubuntu 20.04.1 LTS.

  1. Turn printer off, open "Printers" control panel, delete the default printer installed by Ubuntu.
  2. In terminal, remove the USB driver apt purge ippusbxd
  3. Install new ipp-over-IP driver (DEB) from https://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:/pzz/xUbuntu_20.04/amd64/
  4. Power on printer
  5. In terminal run hp-setup -i and install USB printer with PPD plugin as suggested by installer. Test page will not work.
  6. From any program (ex Libre Office) choose Print and you will find two (!) printers, one with the hostname suffix added to it, (1) mylaserjet, and (2) mylaserjet-lenovo
  7. Print to the the second printer with hostname suffix, ex mylaserjet-lenovo. This printer is not visible in the "Printers" control panel.

And now, finally, magically, I can print. On previous versions of Ubuntu I just plugged in the printer over USB and was up and running. Something has changed. Thank you to all who contributed to the solution in this thread.

1

This has worked for me

sudo apt update

sudo apt install hplip

This takes you to the screen where you need to decide the mode of i/o screen usb or network / ethernet

It downloads the status manager

Then you have to confirm the terms of use / license agreement

It then installs the software and then identifies the printer model and asks you to reconfirm it (In my case HP_LaserJet_Professional_p1108)

On confirmation it downloads driver and asks you to specify location. I gave local. Then it installs the driver and gives option to fire a test page.

Hope this helps..

0

I tried to reinstall as per below link.

https://answers.launchpad.net/hplip/+question/690299

But then, I was getting communication error same as in below error.

"Device Communication error (5012)" - HP printer

But, the solution mentioned in above link, partially worked.

I reinstalled ubuntu 20.04 LTS and it was pretty quick and was able to install within 20 minutes.

While installation, I kept my printer switched on and it auto detected and then onwards it started working any issues.

I was able to print 1. Ubuntu Test Page. 2. I was able to print document on both sides.

Hope this may help others.

0

I had same issue with a Brother printer. I uninstalled cups and reinstalled but it didn't solve the problem. Next, I uninstalled the printer using the printer settings GUI. I then added a new printer and it automatically found the driver and loaded. It works perfectly now. So I'd recommend just trying to remove it and reinstall the printer first using the GUI before doing anything in the terminal if you are not super techy, like me.

0

text files wont print ubuntu 20.04

Sort of a solution:

1st Sun 28 Jun 2020 02:45:17 PM EDT <------------------/ trying cups install /---

open CUPS 2.3.1 http:

//localhost:631/

after install lp only prints 1st line of text file, and acts like job done ??????

-rwxr-xr-x 1 root 63080 Apr 10 09:12 /usr/lib/cups/filter/texttopdf <--------/ likely problem /---

-D [28/Jun/2020:14:46:02 -0400] [Job 59] PID 71266 (/usr/lib/cups/filter/texttopdf) crashed on signal 6.

[ jack @ s0n5-u20 scr-2 ~ ] $ echo "a" | CHARSET=utf-8 /usr/lib/cups/filter/texttopdf 1 user title 1 "PageSize=A4" > out.pdf Unsupported OTF font / glyf table texttopdf: fontembed/sfnt.c:651: otf_get_width: Assertion '0' failed. Aborted (core dumped)

print text files works ubuntu20.04 from gvim && konsole prt sc

enscript /tmp/le0203 [ 1 page * 1 copy ] sent to printer ----/ works /---

but has file location on header ??? not desireable.

enscript -B /tmp/le0203 no file location header !

print text files fails lp lpr

Using

enscript -B is a work around, <------/ my tmp solution /--

Weird Ubuntu 20.04 LTS not tested for lp and lpr use ???

jack

0

Interesting question actually and quite by accident I found how to fix it. I have two computers, both experienced this problem after updating to 20.04 Kubuntu. The fix is easy and works every time. If you've only just installed the system, delete it and reinstall. This time do not select connect to the internet via wireless. Either plug in an ethernet cable or install without updates,both methods work.

Once the system is up and running go to systems and select KDE wallet, disable it. (doesn't every one do that to this useless annoying piece of sh** anyway :-) Now connect to the internet via WiFi.

Then go to printers and you should find your printer is now working!

I haven't investigated why this works but I'm assuming that if you connect to the internet during installation cups or somewhere else along the chain the printers wifi is assigned to root.

I know its going to be annoying to do this if you've spent an entire weekend tweeking the system. But if you've only just put it on and its still the basic interface it only takes twenty minutes or so to reinstall this method is simple and it works. I've done it on 4 computers now

0

I don't know what happened here, but honestly I also agree some TLC is needed for printer setup in 20.04, ( 18.04 i was able to plug it in via USB and it just worked )

I was able to get it working by pressing the wifi button on the printer ( HP Deskjet 2652 ) ... while the printer was plugged in via USB

The button looked like this ( blue LED light to the left of the button )

printer wifi button

After I pressed the button, the printer printed off some not-so-helpful help pages. I then noticed the rest of the options appeared ( print, scan, print test page, align, and wifi setup using usb ), previously i was not able to see them.

enter image description here

Notes on how to open the hp toolbox

sudo apt install hplip hplip-gui
hp-systray -x
#open the device manager from the running service icon in the systray

I then followed the steps to setup wifi over usb.

enter image description here

enter image description here

enter image description here

The blue wifi light started blinking, I completed the wifi setup using WAP, entered my wifi password, and the blue wifi light on the printer stopped blinking and went solid.

and somehow automagically it started printing after I ran hp-setup 192.168.1.178 ( which the usb wifi setup said to run )

Previously when I ran sudo ippfind ; sudo driverless ; sudo hp-scan -g no results were given. After, the wifi print setup it gave me the following.

sudo ippfind
ipp://HPE4E749E59805.local:631/ipp/print

sudo driverless
ipp://HP%20DeskJet%202600%20series%20%5BE59805%5D._ipp._tcp.local/


01:33:40 jmunsch@pop-os Downloads → sudo hp-scan -g
warning: hp-scan should not be run as root/superuser.

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.20.3)
Scan Utility ver. 2.2

Copyright (c) 2001-18 HP Development Company, LP
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

hp-scan[131906]: debug: getDeviceUri(None, None, ['hpaio'], {'scan-type': (<built-in function gt>, 0)}, , True)
hp-scan[131906]: debug: Mode=0

-----------------
| SELECT DEVICE |
-----------------

  Num       Scan device URI                                     
  --------  ----------------------------------------------------
  0         escl:https://192.168.1.178:443                      
  1         escl:http://192.168.1.178:8080                      
  2         hpaio:/usb/DeskJet_2600_series?serial=CN93B8C0PB06MD
  3         hpaio:/net/DeskJet_2600_series?ip=192.168.1.178     

Enter number 0...3 for device (q=quit) ?


previous attempts to setup with just usb printing resulted in:

journalctl -f -u cups > cups_whole_log
Jan 21 00:52:19 pop-os hp[129061]: io/hpmud/musb.c 389: Active kernel driver on interface=1 ret=0
Jan 21 00:52:19 pop-os hp[129061]: io/hpmud/musb.c 535: claimed 7/1/2 interface
Jan 21 00:53:04 pop-os hp[129061]: io/hpmud/musb.c 1455: unable to write data hp:/usb/DeskJet_2600_series?serial=CN93B8C0PB06MD: 45 second io timeout
Jan 21 00:53:04 pop-os hp[129061]: io/hpmud/musb.c 781: read actual device_id successfully fd=1 len=303
Jan 21 00:53:49 pop-os hp[129061]: io/hpmud/musb.c 1455: unable to write data hp:/usb/DeskJet_2600_series?serial=CN93B8C0PB06MD: 45 second io timeout
Jan 21 00:53:49 pop-os hp[129061]: io/hpmud/musb.c 781: read actual device_id successfully fd=1 len=303
Jan 21 00:54:34 pop-os hp[129061]: io/hpmud/musb.c 1455: unable to write data hp:/usb/DeskJet_2600_series?serial=CN93B8C0PB06MD: 45 second io timeout
Jan 21 00:54:34 pop-os hp[129061]: io/hpmud/musb.c 781: read actual device_id successfully fd=1 len=303
Jan 21 00:55:19 pop-os hp[129061]: io/hpmud/musb.c 1455: unable to write data hp:/usb/DeskJet_2600_series?serial=CN93B8C0PB06MD: 45 second io timeout
Jan 21 00:55:19 pop-os hp[129061]: io/hpmud/musb.c 781: read actual device_id successfully fd=1 len=303

Not sure if some apparmor issue, permissions issue, or what, tried chmod the ppd file, and uninstall/re-install hplip, cups, and ippusbxd, all to no avail.

Seemed like some sort of weirdness with IPP over USB, possibly?

0

I found myself here yet again.

  • ubuntu 20.04
  • kernel 5.10+

Run hp-check and see what dependencies are missing.

hp-check
sudo apt purge ippusbxd

Install the dependencies:

sudo apt get install libcups2 \
libjpeg-dev libcups2-dev cups-bsd \
cups-client libcupsimage2-dev libusb-dev \
libsane-dev libsnmp-dev snmp-mibs-downloader \
python3-pyqt5 gtk2-engines-pixbuf \
python3-dev libtool libtool-bin \
libavahi-client-dev libavahi-core-dev

Download the latest .run file

https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing/gethplip

sudo apt install libcanberra-gtk-module libcanberra-gtk3-module

# this will fail, but unpacks a bunch of stuff into the directory
./hplip-3.21.6.run

./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-qt5 --disable-qt4
make -j$(nproc)
sudo make install

If you get the following error while running hp-setup, hp-check, etc:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/hp-setup", line 48, in <module>
    from base import device, utils, tui, models, module, services, os_utils
  File "/usr/share/hplip/base/device.py", line 42, in <module>
    from . import status
  File "/usr/share/hplip/base/status.py", line 50, in <module>
    cupsext = utils.import_ext('cupsext')
  File "/usr/share/hplip/base/utils.py", line 2508, in import_ext
    return importlib.import_module(ext_name)
  File "/home/jm/.pyenv/versions/3.9.10/lib/python3.9/importlib/__init__.py", line 127, in import_module
    return _bootstrap._gcd_import(name[level:], package, level)
ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'cupsext'

Then copy over the compiled libs:

# if you're using a pyenv
# sudo cp ./.libs/* /home/jm/.pyenv/versions/3.8.10/lib/python3.8/

Try testing a print page.

Ensure the network printing is setup, see the other answer, etc

enter image description here

If the power light is blinking ensure the ink area door is closed as well.

0

Start using ghostscript-printer-app from snap store!

I came here after a long painful MONTH trying to fix all sorts of printing errors on Ubuntu 20.04 from not connecting to device, not finding any printers, printing gibberish, etc., with my HP Laserjet P2014.

I went from uninstalling ippusbxd, uninstalling hplip, my printer worked for a while, then for some reasons it broke down yet again. So many trials and errors with different approaches, finally, I came into this app by chance. It just worked right away, without much effort.

Step by step solution

1. Install ghostscript-printer-app from snap store

sudo snap install ghostscript-printer-app --edge

2. Setup printer

  1. Go to http://localhost:8000 > Add printer enter image description here

  2. Specify Device and Driver Name corresponding to your printer model > Add printer enter image description here

Leave a comment to see if it works for you as well!

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