Help With Installing New Printer

[Christian Peeples]

Dear All:

It is very frustrating not being able to come to a meeting with my computer and get help.

I just got a little HP Laser Jet MFP M28-M31. I downloaded the Ubuntu driver. It gave instructions on how to run from the terminal. I opened a terminal and got the following:

~$ cd downloads
bash: cd: downloads: no such file or directory

When I download and try tree, I get pages and pages of lines and numbers with a few recognizable words.

Is there a way to run the driver from the GUI or how do I find out what Ubuntu is calling my downloads file?

-- Chris Peeples --


-- Chris Peeples --

[Rick Moen]

Quoting 'Christian Peeples' via BerkeleyLUG (berke...@googlegroups.com):

> I just got a little HP Laser Jet MFP M28-M31.

Well, that sounds like you have your first problem right there.

HP's documentation suggests that 'MFP M28-M31' is not a multifunction
printer model, but rather a _group_ of multifunction printer models,
comprising the following HP LaserJet Pro MFP models: M28a, M28w, M29a,
M29w, M30a, M30W, and M31w.

So, maybe you ought to circle back and look at your multifunction
printer and figure out what its model number is. Giving people whom you
want to help you wrong or vague information makes it difficult for them
to assist you.

The docs suggest that these multifunction printers are theoretically
reachable from computers via either or both of USB 2.0 or built-in WiFi
802.11b/g/n. Long experience suggests you should avoid WiFi
connectivity to this printer (as there tend to be various problems) and
stick to USB.

> I downloaded the Ubuntu driver.

Stop there.

Sorry, what? First of all, it's not clear that you need to download
anything at all. Second, your term 'the Ubuntu driver' is so incredibly
vague, that nobody here is going to be able to determine what the heck
you're talking about.

Part of the problem here, I would guess, is that you didn't take
contemporaneous notes when you did things, so now you're trying to
reconstruct a description from unaided memory, and you can't remember
details. Nothing wrong with you, of course, People's memories are
almost never able to pull that off. But, what I'm saying is, you
would want to go back and try... things... a second time, but this time
taking contemporaneous notes.

But you shouldn't be trying things out yet. Because first you should
figure out what actual printer model you have. Then, you should perhaps
see if your distro's package version of HPLIP provides support for this
gadget. Then _maybe_ you will end up needing to download the
proprietary binary-only HPLIP software directly from HP, which is
something you should avoid and do only if necessary.

> It gave instructions on how to run from the terminal.

'It'?

Notice the problem? Nobody is going to have Clue One what your word
'it' refers to, here.

> I opened a terminal and got the following:
>
> ~$ cd downloads
> bash: cd: downloads: no such file or directory

Dude. I'll bet you were supposed to type 'cd Downloads'.

Welcome to Unix. Filenames/directory names are case-sensitive.
'downloads' and 'Downloads' are different.

> When I download and try tree, I get pages and pages of lines and
> numbers with a few recognizable words.

Dude. What the heck? Again, nobody is going to have any idea what you
mean when you say 'when I download'. And then, are you serious that you
were using the 'tree' command? Why exactly? What problem were you
trying to solve?

It seems like maybe you were trying to follow some set of instructions
somewhere (where?), but going off-track. But what set of instructions,
and why that set of instructions?

You may be energetically attempting to solve the wrong problem.


Take a deep breath, back up, and figure out what HP LaserJet Pro MFP
model you have. Start there.

--
Cheers, "Rand Paul being patient zero for a Senate
Rick Moen viral outbreak is a sign of a writers' room
ri...@linuxmafia.com dropping too much acid, late in the season."
McQ! (4x80) -- @owillis (Oliver Willis)

[Christian Peeples]

Rick:

Thanks. I'll start over.

-- Chris Peeples --

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "BerkeleyLUG" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to berkeleylug+unsub...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/berkeleylug/20200608081146.GO26089%40linuxmafia.com.

[tom r lopes]

>   ~$ cd downloads

Should be 

~$ cd Downloads

(Tab completion is your friend)  

Thomas

[Rick Moen]

I wrote:

> HP's documentation suggests that 'MFP M28-M31' is not a multifunction
> printer model, but rather a _group_ of multifunction printer models,
> comprising the following HP LaserJet Pro MFP models: M28a, M28w, M29a,
> M29w, M30a, M30W, and M31w.

I can give you some additional tips. For _all_ of the above-cited seven
models, the following is true, according to
https://developers.hp.com/hp-linux-imaging-and-printing/supported_devices/index
:


1. The minimum version of HP's 'HPLIP' software that supports the
printer is HPLIP version 3.18.4.

2. Fortunately, no proprietary binary-only 'plug-in' is also required
for this series of printers to provide required HP 'secret-sauce'
functionality concealed from the open-source community. Thus if your
distro packages HPLIP version 3.18.4, then you needn't go outside your
distro package regime at all (and that is A Good Thing). If your
distro's available version of HPLIP is earlier than 3.18.4, and no
packaged upgrade is available to furnish 3.18.4 or above, then and
_only_ then would you be forced to download newer, unpackaged HPLIP from
HP's download site. (But at least you wouldn't also need to download a
binary-secret-sauce plug-in, as well.)

3. The supported connectivity provided by HPLIP 3.18.4 is via USB
(i.e., not over WiFi) -- which is in accordance with my suspicions.


Anyhow, looking ahead, after you figure out what printer model you
actually have, next matter logically is: Does your system have the
Ubuntu packaging of HPLIP installed? If not, do that. If so, what
version is it?

Something like this would make certain all the packages are there:

sudo apt-get hplip hplip-data hplip-doc hplip-gui hpijs-ppds \
libsane-hpaio printer-driver-hpcups printer-driver-hpijs

That'll make sure you have all the relevant packages for _both_ printing
and scanning installed (because the next thing you'll want to do with
your MFP thingie is scanning, right?).

You said Ubuntu, so, by the way, what Ubuntu release?

xenial (16.04LTS) furnishes HPLIP version 3.16.3+repack0-1 (not new enough)
bionic (18.04LTS) furnishes HPLIP version 3.17.10+repack0-5 (not new enough)
eoan (19.10) furnishes HPLIP version 3.19.6+dfsg0-1ubuntu1 (_new enough_)
focal (20.04LTS) furnishes HPLIP version 3.20.3+dfsg0-2 (_new enough_)
groovy (20.10 - beta) furnishes HPLIP version 3.20.5+dfsg0-3 (_new enough_)

So, basically if your Ubuntu is earlier than the 19.10 release, then
you'll need a newer HPLIP than Ubuntu provides packaged for your distro
(but also, frankly, you're on an ancient distro and ought to upgrade).