Topic: HP Officejet install

[jonah]

Hi all

I've successfully setup SME Server in standalone mode with mail, internet and DHCP. The last thing I need to do is setup my printer so a mix of clients windows xp and SUSE linux machines can use it. The problem is, it's a USB HP Officejet 6110 printer plugged directly into the server but no-one can print to it. I have various error messages 'you do not have permissions' to 'the incorrect printer driver is installed'. I've trawled the web spent hours googling but I am no nearer to solving this so has anyone out there had the same problem and if so has anyone solved it. I'd really like to resolve this one last issue and then I can dump my Windows 2000 Server!!

Thanks in advance!!!

Jonah

[beeboob]

Have you try to add it in the server manager?  Just whit the lan ip adress of the server?

[dsemuk]

Some HP printers seem to be designed to make installation on a server as difficult as possible!  Fine when connected straight to a PC but not when connected to a server.

Did you setup the printer within server-manager OK?  Did that give any problems?

With the basic driver being 45+mb I didn't download it to have a look.

Dave

[robertmcgill]

I'm a bit of a noob to the whole linux server world and had a bear of a time installing an Epson Stylus Photo 1280 and an Olympus P-400 on my SME7rc2 box.  

After a bit of messing around, they both work flawlessly from what I can tell.  What I did was install the rvanddenaker CUPS contrib.  I then plugged the Epson into the parallel port and the Olympus into a USB port and configured them under CUPS as RAW printers.  

I can now print to both from Windows XP just fine and can even use the Epson printer utility to check and clean the nozzles.  The Epson Status Monitor program doesn't work, but it was kind of buggy in Window$ anyway so it's not really missed.  

At one point, I had some of the same problems you described about not being able to connect to the printer or the wrong driver being installed, etc.  When I added the printers in Windows XP, I used the standard add printer dialog and set them up as IPP printers.  As I said, I'm pretty new to the Linux server thing, but it eventually worked for me.

The documentation is excellent and you can find it here:

http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rvandenaker/testing/smeserver-cups/documentation/

[jonah]

Firstly thanks guys for all your suggestions.

In answer to some of your replys and in order of doing things.
I did try to setup the printer through the server manager which it seemed to do but when trying to print from both linux and windows xp they all bailed out saying the incorrect printer driver was installed.
Next I installed HP Officejet printers locally on client machines with exactly the same response.
Next trick was to see if the printer driver was installed on the server and from the results it didn't appear to be. I went to LinuxPrinting.org for some help to try and install the hplip driver but lo and behold when I tried to install it SME tells me there was no C compler installed and failed dismally.
There is also no CUPS installed and I am now at the end of the road and out of ideas. Why is it distro's like SUSE include all of this as standard and setting up a printer is a breeze on it?
Anyway I will have a look at the link you posted and see if this helps. If not it may have to be back to the drawing board to find a easy server distro setup.

Jonah  

[raem]

jonah

Read the manual carefully about setting up printers.

sme server passes all printer jobs "straight through".

You do not install printer drivers on sme server, you install the drivers on the workstations.
You MUST add the printers in server manager and configure them for the correct physical port they are connected to (on the server) ie parallel or USB.
Remember also that the printer Location = Network printer IS NOT a printer that is physically connected to your server. It IS a printer that is connected as a network device (with its own IP) somewhere on your network. Generally you would select the RAW setting for Network printers.


So the recipe is to test your printer on a Windows workstation and get it working there, Update the driver if necessary. Then transfer the printer to LPT1 or USB1 on your server and simply add the printer using that port.
Configure your workstation to connect to the shared printer name usually under the Ports setting in the printer config.

It should all just work. If it doesn't then your driver is most likely the problem, or the way you have configured everything.

Some printers will not work with sme, These are the so called "Windows" printers that use processing power of the workstation.
Any printer you use with sme has to be a standalone type of printer.

[jonah]

I have come to the conclusion that the HP Officejet is just one of those printers that will not work under SME. I have even used the following link which was very useful and followed those instructions to the letter, thanks to Rob McGill for that, but still no joy. It now says there was an exception error (0x06606xxxx and crashes out. I may try using a USB Print server and see if I have any success but somehow I doubt it.

Ray thanks for your comments about setting up under Windows which I had already done, tried and tested but once transferred to the SME Server USB port it was back to the same error messages so I think this is where it ends.

Jonah

[dtech]

I have come to the conclusion that the HP Officejet is just one of those printers that will not work under SME. I have even used the following link which was very useful and followed those instructions to the letter, thanks to Rob McGill for that, but still no joy. It now says there was an exception error (0x06606xxxx and crashes out. I may try using a USB Print server and see if I have any success but somehow I doubt it.

Ray thanks for your comments about setting up under Windows which I had already done, tried and tested but once transferred to the SME Server USB port it was back to the same error messages so I think this is where it ends.

Jonah

Jonah;

I've wrestled with OfficeJets and linux for a few years now, and I think the best way to deal with them on a network is to get a JetDirect device and connect it to that. I think you'd have to check HP's site to see which JetDirect works with what OfficeJet. I have a 175x on my OJ7110 and all the features are available to all the workstations. You still have to install either HP's drivers on the Windows machines or HPLIP (or HPOJ) on the
linux machines, but then all you need is the IP of the JetDirect and you're printing and scanning across the network.

I'd be  interested to know how a USB print server would work. I actually think it would work just fine. USB print servers can be had for $10 on sale, so it's worth a shot. Good luck,

-Pete

[aussie]

The documentation is excellent and you can find it here:

http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rvandenaker/testing/smeserver-cups/documentation/

Thanks for that reference!
I just wanted ghostscript and figured I would put CUPS in.

Yum is soooooooooo easy!
a couple of minutes on the Install Instructions, grab a coffee while it downloads - all done.  Here's to the HowTo creator as well - THANK YOU
 :pint: Rob

[jonah]

Hi Rob

I am still trying to get this printer working as I really like SME. I'm  now one step closer though as I can print from the server using CUPS but still can't print using the clients. I think this has something to do with the export of the printer driver as described in the How to print to filtering CUPS queues from network hosts? from the excellent

http://mirror.contribs.org/smeserver/contribs/rvandenaker/testing/smeserver-cups/documentation/howtos
and I quote

Printing from Windows NT4/2000/XP through Samba

# Run cupsaddsmb from the root prompt to "export" your printers. You can export individual printers with the command line

[root@hostname ~]# cupsaddsmb -U admin -v printer1 [printer2...printerX]

or you can export all printers at once with the command line

[root@hostname ~]# cupsaddsmb -U admin -v -a

These command lines connect to the samba server as admin, so you need to supply the admin password when prompted.

What I get is the following error message

NT  STATUS NETWORK ACCESS DENIED making remote directory \w32x86
NT  STATUS NETWORK ACCESS DENIED  opening remote file \W32X86\officejet 6100series.ppd
NT  STATUS NETWORK ACCESS DENIED  opening remote file \W32X86\cupsdrvr.dll
NT  STATUS NETWORK ACCESS DENIED  opening remote file \W32X86\cupssui.dll

It also doesn't acknowledge the admin password when I try to connect the printer using a Windows XP machine. It gets as far as connecting  stating the admin user has no rights to connect even though it is the correct one.
I am sure that Samba /Cups should be able to act as a print server so any further tips / advice would be useful especially for the above error.I am considering installing the latest version of CUPS and see how this fares as I've tried evrything else

Jonah

[Robert]

...snip...
[root@hostname ~]# cupsaddsmb -U admin -v -a
...snip...
NT  STATUS NETWORK ACCESS DENIED making remote directory \w32x86
NT  STATUS NETWORK ACCESS DENIED  opening remote file \W32X86\officejet 6100series.ppd
NT  STATUS NETWORK ACCESS DENIED  opening remote file \W32X86\cupsdrvr.dll
NT  STATUS NETWORK ACCESS DENIED  opening remote file \W32X86\cupssui.dll

It looks like I missed a samba configuration change in SME7 that breaks cupsaddsmb. That change is that print$ is not writable if UseClientDriver is set to yes and that UseClientDriver is set to yes by default.
What you need to do for cupsaddsmb to work is:
# db configuration setprop smb UseClientDriver no
# expand-template /etc/samba/smb.conf
# service smb reload
After that, cupsaddsmb should work.

Cheers, Robert