At home we have an HP OfficeJet J6410 printer, which has worked brilliantly for years. Unlike every previous printer we’ve owned, this printer sits happily on our network and seems perfectly content to be used only very occasionally, whereon it willingly responds with decent quality prints and scans.

I have set up the printer with a static IP address and so the scanning is managed via the web interface http://192.168.0.100/webScan, whereon the scanned image opens a new tab in the browser, enabling you to save to wherever.

This printing and scanning Nirvana hit a road bump today, when it just instantly went to “Scan done” and failed to actually do anything. Rebooting the laptop, the printer and clearing temporary internet files all failed to resolve the problem, as did changing from Chrome to Firefox.

In desperation I tried running Ubuntu Simple Scan, but predictably enough it did not find the printer. A quick Internet search took me to this excellent Ubunutu community page.

I opened a terminal and typed:

$ hp-makeuri 192.168.0.100

CUPS URI: hp:/net/Officejet_J6400_series?ip=192.168.0.100
SANE URI: hpaio:/net/Officejet_J6400_series?ip=192.168.0.100
HP Fax URI: hpfax:/net/Officejet_J6400_series?ip=192.168.0.100

Done.

I then typed (taking the SANE URI from above):

$ simple-scan hpaio:/net/Officejet_J6400_series?ip=192.168.0.100

And it worked perfectly! Flushed with success I read on to see how to make this a permanent fixture, and it turned out that all I needed to do was configure the CUPS URI for the printer itself (it was previously set to something like socket://192.168.0.100):

$ vim /etc/cups/printers.com

DeviceURI hp:/net/Officejet_J6400_series?ip=192.168.0.100

And now simply running Ubuntu Simple Scan works perfectly.

Thank you Ubuntu community!

Install Cups Print System

This also installs printer libraries, printing for GIMP, additional fonts etc.

$ sudo apt-get install cupsys cupsys-client cupsys-bsd cupsys-driver-gimpprint cups-pdf cupsys-pt cupsys-driver-gutenprint libgutenprint2 gutenprint-doc gutenprint-locales foomatic-db-gutenprint foomatic-db-engine foomatic-db foomatic-db-hpijs foomatic-filters foomatic-filters-ppds hplip hplip-doc hp-ppd hpijs hpijs-ppds hplip-data python-qt3 python-sip4 psfontmgr ttf-kochi-mincho ttf-arphic-bkai00mp ttf-arphic-bsmi00lp ttf-arphic-gbsn00lp ttf-arphic-gkai00mp ttf-baekmuk gs-cjk-resource xpp linuxprinting.org-ppds 

Wine Printing

See: http://frankscorner.org

Another way to print in Wine, steps:

• regedit
• in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Print\Printers\~cups_printer_name~
• find the key “Port”
• change it’s value to |kprinter for KDE

When the user wants to print, the standard print dialog appears.

A month ago I wrote about our problems printing to our colour photocopier. Well this problem is still hurting us. I have tried setting up cups to work by lpr, ipp, http, socket and jetdirect. Amazingly I was able to print CUPS test pages from most of these, but without it making any difference to the problem. I have tried switching off CUPS in Iceweasel, so that it prints via kprinter (see Configure Iceweasel to print via kprinter), but amazingly the problem continues.

Looking through the CUPS error.log, I noted an error on locale, so I reconfigured:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure locales

And I added the three en_GB locales, and set the UTF-8 as the default. I also change the test web-page to use en_GB. This eradicated the error messages, but did not induce the photocopier to print.

I have tried using four different PPDs from Konica Minolta and from OpenPrinting.org, but without any difference.

This is without doubt the most intractable problem that I have as yet encountered in Linux.

Interestingly, I was able to print the same webpage from Iceweasel3 from my new Debian Sid PC. When setting up the printer the PPD was already available from within CUPS, which I will need to investigate further, although my suspicion is that the key change is the browser. Maybe I need to upgrade to Iceweasel 3, although this is only available in Experimental at present, which would not be sensible for our LTSP server.

I do feel that I am between a rock and a hard place.

Since making the transition to Linux we have been unable to print reliably to our Konica Minolta C250 colour photocopier. Basically only simple print jobs will print, more complicated print jobs never come through, the data light flashes indefinitely and the photocopier needs to be rebooted. In particular we have problems printing PDFs and wep-pages in Iceweasel. Web-pages in Konqueror seem okay, which makes you think that the problem is with the non-KDE applications, but the PDFs that won’t print from Acrobat Reader, also won’t print from KPDF.

We have tried various drivers from Konica Minolta, including C250, C252 and C253, but with no improvement.

In particular we have problems printing PDFs and wep-pages in Iceweasel. Web-pages in Konqueror seem okay, which makes you think that the problem is with the non-KDE applications, but the PDFs that won’t print from Acrobat Reader, also won’t print from KPDF.

I am fortunate in having some help from Transcribe Thames. Simon has set-up an Ubuntu desktop and has proved that he can print fine to a C250. Simon felt that the only difference between our two set-ups was the fact that we still had windows active directory LDAP authentication on it. I have today removed, but printing is not improved.

The ability to print in colour is important to us, and the fact that as I roll-out Linux, each user loses the ability to print in colour, is not good. Hopefully I will have more success tomorrow.

The Issue

From Linux, only simple print jobs will print, more complicated print jobs never come through, the data light flashes indefinitely and the photocopier needs to be rebooted.

We have tried various drivers from Konica Minolta, including C250, C252 and C253, but with no improvement.

In particular we have problems printing PDFs and wep-pages in Iceweasel. Web-pages in Konqueror seem okay, which makes you think that the problem is with the non-KDE applications, but the PDFs that won’t print from Acrobat Reader, also won’t print from KPDF.

Progress

I am fortunate in having some help from Transcribe Thames. Simon has set-up an Ubuntu desktop and has proved that he can print fine to a C250. Simon felt that the only difference between our two set-ups was the fact that we still had windows active directory LDAP authentication on it. I have today removed, but printing is not improved.

Next Step

Simon has asked me to try again on a fresh Ubuntu desktop.