System :: Trying to get CUPS to work

I've been struggling for a while to get CUPS to work with a HP OfficeJet G85 connected via USB directly to my machine.

1. If I use cups.unc everything appears to set up OK. I chose a Deskjet 900 series driver as per the hplip site on Sourceforge and tried a test page. The test page print job apparently completes OK, there are no error message, but nothing prints.

2. If I use apt-get to install hplip from oldstable, I can use some of the utilities to check that my printer is seen OK:

Code Sample

# hp-probe --bus=usb

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 0.9.2)
Device Detection (Probe) Utility ver. 1.1
...
Device URI Model
----------------------------------------- ----------------
hp:/usb/OfficeJet_G85?serial=SGG13E0C49VL HP OfficeJet_G85

If I set CUPS up with this URI and try to print a test page, the print job comes up as cancelled and I get the following error message from /var/log/cups/error_log:

I [09/Jun/2007:16:48:02 -0400] Job 3 queued on 'OfficeJetG85' by 'root'.
E [09/Jun/2007:16:48:02 -0400] Unable to convert file 0 to printable format for job 3!
I [09/Jun/2007:16:48:02 -0400] Hint: Do you have ESP Ghostscript installed?
I [09/Jun/2007:16:48:02 -0400] Hint: Try setting the LogLevel to "debug".

Ghostscript was installed via apt-get hpijs, but just to make sure, I downloaded and compiled the espgs-7.07.1 binary with the same result.

Ha anybody seen the same problem?

Attacking this from a different angle, I compiled the following:

libpng-1.2.16
espgs-8.15.4
cups-1.2.11
net-snmp-5.2.4
hplip-1.7.4a

The compile competes OK, does not complain about anything missing and the CUPS browser-based set up goes OK.

When I try to print a test page to a different printer (HP OfficeJet K80 via USB) it doesn't work and I get these error messages:

CUPS browser interface
"/usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip failed"
"open print channel failed; will retry in 30 seconds..."

/var/log/messages
user.err hpiod: unable to read MlcReverseReply header: Resource temporarily unavailable bytesRead=0 io/hpiod/mlc.cpp 237
user.info hpiod: invalid MLCInitReply retrying command... io/hpiod/mlc.cpp 345
user.err hpiod: unable to read MlcReverseReply header: Resource temporarily unavailable bytesRead=0 io/hpiod/mlc.cpp 237
user.err hpiod: invalid MLCInitReply: cmd=0, result=3 , revision=40 io/hpiod/mlc.cpp 355
user.warn OfficeJet_K80?serial=ES0911401VOH: INFO: open print channel failed; will retry in 30 seconds...

Any ideas?

Is foomatic* installed? Though "Resource temporarily unavailable" doesn't seem good...

In fact foomatic wasn't installed so I compiled it, but still could not print - both cups and hplip seem to be poor at stating what exactly is required for them to work.

I had a minor breakthrough yesterday in that I managed to print a test page - in two years of using DSL, this is the first time I managed to get anything out of a printer...

Here's the list of debs I installed from oldstable (in that order):

debconf, ucf, libjpeg62, libpaper1, libc6, libssl, libsnmp-base, libsensors3, libsnmp5, libncurses5, libreadline4, libdb4.2, zlib1g, python2.3, python, libtiff4, libpng12-0, libslp1, xpdf-common, libgcc1, gcc-3.3-base, libstdc++5, xpdf-utils, libaudio2, libexpat1, libfontconfig1, liblcms1, libmng1, libxrender1, libxcursor1, libqt3c102-mt, xlibmesa-glu, python2.3-sip4-qt3, python2.3-qt3, python-qt3, libgpg-error0, libgcrypt11, liblzo1, libopencdk8, libtasn1, libgnutls11, libcupsys2-gnutls10, libcupsimage2, patch, libgdbm3, perl-base, perl-modules, perl, libusb-0.1-4, usbutils, defoma, libgimpprint1, gsfonts, gs-common, gs-gpl, gs, libglib2, gs-esp, cupsys, hplip-data, hplip, cupsys-client, cupsys-bsd

Again, there are several debs that are required that are not mentioned in the list of dependencies for hplip.

Apart from the test page (only from cups, not from hp-testpage), I could not get anything else out of the OfficeJetG85 - I tried to print from Firefox but got an error about gtk and widgets(?). Using an OfficeJetK80 I did not get any errors but also did not get any test page or other print.

Can it really be so hard to print (and this is without speaking of faxes or scanning)?

Does printing the unix way work?
eg echo "Testing printing" > /dev/lp0 or whatever the printer is?

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