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I'm trying to get a very old, but working great C2001A/J4100A (HP LaserJet 4) to work with the HP Linux Imaging and Printing library, but I'm having an awful time of it.

1) There's no entry in /usr/share/hplip/data/models/models.dat for [hp_laserjet_4]. This is the first problem so far when I used Bonjour discovery through an avahi.service file I put on my OpenWRT router. I don't currently have an iPhone I want it to discover with AirPrint, but this is how I started off and helps CUPS finds printers anyways.

2) SLP discovery is a complete bomb. I've traced it down to the UDP packet the JetDirect sends off in response to the broadcast discovery request. The part that is 'x-hp-p1=0' should be something like 'x-hp-p1=MFG:HP;MDL:LaserJet4;etc..' and it causes hp-probe to fail to see what printer the JetDirect is plugged into.

I can't seem to force HPLIP to bypass the bad discovery methods and it's too smart and wants to verify.

I've posted to the HPLIP help area, but they seem to run a week slow.

user3171192
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    Posting off-topic on [so] won't help either. You may get help on [su] –  Jan 08 '14 at 00:25
  • hp-probe[27737]: debug: Found device: {'ip': '192.168.001.011', 'mac': '001083077ced', 'hn': 'HPLJ4-1', 'num_devices': 1, 'product_id': 'J4100A', 'device1': '0', 'device3': '0', 'device2': '0', 'note': '', 'num_ports': 1, 'status_code': 0} As far as I can tell from source diving, in base/device.py for probeDevices() about at line 517, because 'device1,device2,device3' have no value, the unit the JetDirect 4100A card is plugged into, can not be detected using the SLP method, slp.detectNetworkDevices(), from base/slp.py – user3171192 Jan 08 '14 at 01:34

1 Answers1

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Instead of doing JetDirect, try LPR directly to the IP address. And any of the older PCL drivers should work against that printer.

Xavier J
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  • CUPS with gutenprint through socket://192.168.1.11:9100 does work, but I'm not happy with it. HPLIP wants to own the I/O. I couldn't get lpd://192.168.1.11/auto to work, actually. – user3171192 Jan 08 '14 at 00:42
  • I haven't tried the IPP method yet, but if I can't use the HPLIP I/O and rendering for their CUPS URI such as hp:/net/HP-LaserJet-4/?ip=192.168.1.11 I haven't much improved things. – user3171192 Jan 08 '14 at 00:50
  • Well, you have an OLD, old piece of gear there and sometimes you need to get down and dirty. Hook up the printer, and power it up, of course. Run a TCP port scan against its IP address and see which ports are listening. Anything other than the SSH and TCP ports might be a candidate against which you can push some traffic for printing, but you'd have to research what *printing* protocol any such port will support. – Xavier J Jan 08 '14 at 16:15
  • rather OLD! 1993 I think ;) As for ports, it's good for LPD, IPP, JetDirect at 9100 and even FTP for sending jobs. Personalities are just PCL5e. It doesn't do PostScript. I can't get CUPS to do LPD as a generic text device for some unknown reason. The SLP problem with replying 'x-hp-p1=0' rather than reporting the printer model is the big hang-up for using HPLIP [link](http://hplipopensource.com/). – user3171192 Jan 08 '14 at 19:01
  • It might end-up being a error with the Canon EX print engine talking to the MIO JetDirect card and for which there just might not be a fix. SNMP can report the model attached, so the code in base/device.py for the probeDevices() method could use a little hacking. HPLIP does 2,295 printers, but not mine.. GRRRR – user3171192 Jan 08 '14 at 19:02