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!

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.

I can’t believe a week has passed, with no blog entry. Apologies.

This week I have added my About Linux and About Windows pages, including Why Linux and Protecting your Windows PC. I hope that these pages will help users to recognise the issues running Windows systems and consider using Linux instead. I have also moved my Windows for Linux page under the About Linux. Still don’t think I have the site layout quite right yet, so don’t be surprised if they all move around again!

This week has seen a big push to get our last Windows users over to LTSP. It’s gone pretty well, although we still have problems printing to our Konica Minolta C250 photocopier. I have three users remaining, all three of which will prove the greatest challenge, but also the greatest opportunity - in some ways they have the most to gain from Linux. They just don’t know it yet!