How to get a HP PhotoSmart printer working with Kubuntu 8.04
I recently purchased a HP Photosmart C6380 All-in-one printer/scanner/copier from the ever-fantastic Newegg, and had some problems installing the printer drivers on my Kubuntu 8.04 (Hardy) 64-bit system.
The setup
- Kubuntu 8.04 LTS, 64-bit, upgraded direct from Kubuntu 6.06 LTS
- HP Photosmart printer, connected to my internal network's router
The problem
Installing the hplip v2.8.2 drivers from hardy's repositories gave me printing ability, but I could not scan.
Using the more recent hplip v3.9.2 drivers allowed me to scan, but not to print. The error message was Unable to start filter "foomatic-rip-hplip" - No such file or directory.
How I fixed it
Completely uninstall the repository's hplip
aptitude purge hplip
Download the latest hplip package from HP Linux Imaging and Printing
Add all packages that hplip needs. This may vary depending on your system; this list is only what I had to add to my existing packages.
aptitude install libtool libsnmp-dev libsane-dev cupsddk cupsddk-drivers dbus-x11
Remove any printers that no longer exist
I think an existing printer driver for an older printer that I had disconnected caused a problem. Remove it from System Settings/Computer Administration/Printers.
Run the latest hplip installer.
sh hplip-3.9.2-run
Your filename may vary.
Test printing and scanning.
If it fails with the dreaded foomatic-rip-hplip message
Clear out the existing installation
sudo rm -rf /usr/share/hplip
Run these commands within the hplip-3.9.2 directory
./configure --enable-foomatic-rip-hplip-install make checkinstall
I use CheckInstall to install any custom builds as individual packages.
That should do it - at least, it worked for me.
References
See my next entry for some helpful network scanning tools.