HPLIP printer drivers broken. Grayscale and dark colours wrong

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

I've got exactly the same problem with my HP Photosmart 7760 and I already have task-printing-scanning installed!

[melodie]

Hi Davecs, have you uninstalled it and reinstalled it ? What exactly does not work ?

[OMSkates]

Hi Bascule,

You have not told us if you have all the foomatic packages and so on installed. Have you installed with task-printing-hp for instance ?

The gui is simple, you just need to start it from the menus.

HP Office Jet 6000.  I uninstalled and reinstalled using HP device configurator and I get

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Set printer queue as default operation fails. Could not connect to CUPS Server.  Is user added to "sys" group(s) ...when setting printer as default.  However it does find the printer and completes job requests.  When printing a document black still prints too light unless I change settings to Black/GreyScale then its fine.  

[melodie]

Hi,

Setting printer queues is the job done by the package gutenprint-foomatic.

Is it installed ?

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

I've got it working properly now! But it took a bit of messing about.

I have synaptic set not to delete archives, so I still had some old versions of everything in /var/cache/apt/archives

Firstly, I uninstalled all the hplip 3.11.3a-1 drivers from synaptic. Then I reverted back to version 3.10.9-2 the command line was:

cd /var/cache/apt/archives
rpm -Uvh hplip-3.10.9-2pclos2010.i586.rpm hplip-gui-3.10.9-2pclos2010.i586.rpm hplip-hpijs-3.10.9-2pclos2010.i586.rpm hplip-hpijs-ppds-3.10.9-2pclos2010.i586.rpm hplip-model-data-3.10.9-2pclos2010.i586.rpm libsane-hpaio1-3.10.9-2pclos2010.i586.rpm libhpip0-3.10.9-2pclos2010.i586.rpm

the bit starting "rpm" is one long line.

When I installed the printer in HPLIP, the default driver still printed with the same errors, so I uninstalled it and when I tried to install it again, I rejected the default driver, instead opting for the deskjet 990c driver.

This has done the trick.

[Ɗα√ϵς§]

By the way, with the latest HPLIP, the 990C driver is not available.

[wedgetail]

bascule
I was exploring some interesting aspects in a MiniMe installation and as a test looked in forum and stumbled upon this thread.

The following is general and needs a bit of expertise but others can easily help out with the things I don't understand or have done wrong.

1.. Have CUPS running
2.. Make sure task-printing-hp is installed
3.. Your printer is Photosmart C6380
4.. on command line do, but insert your own details where needed, I just print a list of all drivers that cups know about, printing this to a text file:

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[root@localhost gert]# lpinfo -m >>/home/gert/Documents/110124-cups_printers_available_inc_hp.glk
[root@localhost gert]#

5.. Open this text file in kwrite and do a search for your c6380 and c6200, you will find the c6200 but you will not find c6380, correct?

6.. You must have the hpijs c6380 to get the best use of your printer

7.. There are a number of inkjet printers from hp that has struggled like hell in pclos and other distros, in pclos the database has never been well synced with hplip. If you have been able to install the hp custom hplip (hpijs is a subsection of this) then you would be in luck.

And good luck, I ran a mile when I saw what this entailed, massive installation to get one only file, after a while I stopped running and got cunning  and real so in my own book 

8.. Specific to c6380, go here and look just of interest, this tells me there will be a driver some where

http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/models/photosmart/photosmart_c6300_series.html

9.. Download the tarball pick your choice how you get it

http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/downloads.html
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/hplip/hplip-3.11.5.tar.gz

10.. I have downloaded the tarball to my 'downloads folder

tar:/home/gert/Downloads/110611-hplip-3.11.5.tar.gz/hplip-3.11.5/ppd/hpijs

Look inside with Konqeror or anything that suits you, but it must be capable of handling a .tar file and in the case of the c6830 I can see:

tar:/home/gert/Downloads/110611-hplip-3.11.5.tar.gz/hplip-3.11.5/ppd/hpijs/hp-photosmart_c6300_series-hpijs.ppd.gz

11.. Inside the tarball is one specific file, the needed ppd file, hp-photosmart_c6300_series-hpijs.ppd.gz

This file has .gz on the end, does not matter as CUPS can read this without having to unpack to the final level of .ppd.

You must unzip/unrar/untar or whatever to get the .gz file out of the tarball, that is your business  , store in a place you can remember.

12.. Then install your new printer ( or printer que) in or via CUPS but at the time when you can supply a custom file, point to the location where you have safely stored your printer driver. 


Note:  To all of those who have struggled with double sided printing in the past, I can only recommend testing this out, and don't get fooled by drivers of identical model numbers except missing 'hpijs' in the name.  They will work almost the basic printing will be correct.

No, it will not fix some problems in higher level packages. Well I don't think so as I have not investigated any further.

Sorry I can't do any of the other ways of installing printers, they failed my tests at the time.

 

[wedgetail]

davecs
You are quite right about the c990 in hplip but what about this one

drv:///hp/hpijs.drv/hp-photosmart_7700_series-hpijs.ppd HP Photosmart 7700 Series hpijs, 3.11.3a

This is from my tarball download and extracted hpijs section to a text file opened with kwrite, select all, F7, enter 'sort' (no quote marks) this gives little neater overview but using the search facility the 'sort' does not really matter

Sorry I have not checked any further as I am out of time, but follow my instructions above and just cleave above file out and install it via cups.
It is an hpijs.

Please let us know result, good luck   

[JALU]

Have seen reported grey/color contrast problem on Photosmart C3100, C4100 and a C4300 HP printers - all worked fine using the Photosmart C8100 driver.
Cages

[wedgetail]

darkages

Quite interesting, can you provide some reference that I can look at as it is not clear what drivers are being used

In my MiniMe installation updated only hours ago, by installing task-printing-hp, the following will be available:

drv:///hp/hpijs.drv/hp-photosmart_c3100_series-hpijs.ppd HP Photosmart c3100 Series hpijs, 3.11.3a
drv:///hp/hpcups.drv/hp-photosmart_c3100_series.ppd HP Photosmart c3100 Series, hpcups 3.11.3a

drv:///hp/hpijs.drv/hp-photosmart_c4100_series-hpijs.ppd HP Photosmart c4100 Series hpijs, 3.11.3a
drv:///hp/hpcups.drv/hp-photosmart_c4100_series.ppd HP Photosmart c4100 Series, hpcups 3.11.3a

From what you are saying above can be handled by

drv:///hp/hpijs.drv/hp-photosmart_c8100_series-hpijs.ppd HP Photosmart c8100 Series hpijs, 3.11.3a
drv:///hp/hpcups.drv/hp-photosmart_c8100_series.ppd HP Photosmart c8100 Series, hpcups 3.11.3a

Edit:
hpijs C4300 series is not in present pclos but but the c4340 series is and the c4380 series, this means that darkages mentioning 4300 printer series very likely is covered in pclos task-printing-hp

I will assume it is the hpijs driver used, but this is why I need some reference as this is very important

(work in progress ...)

[JALU]

I will assume it is the hpijs driver used, but this is why I need some reference as this is very important
(work in progress ...)

Will do.  I'll get back to you with the details.
Cages

[JALU]

Details are a little sketchy so far.
The c3180 was my printer, but out of ink now and the ink cost about $60 to replace both color and black.
Unfortunately it won't print without the color tank so I have just recently purchased a Samsung Mono Laser printer model ML-1865 for $57.
Anyway, as best I can recollect-
OS:  Linux 2.6.38.3-pclos1.bfs i686
KDE:  4.6.2 (4.6.2)
I have CUPS 1.4.6 installed.
using HP Device Manager, found printer - Photosmart_C3100
and it selected driver from here-
/usr/share/cups/model/3-distribution/HP/hp-photosmart_c3100_series.ppd.gz
Driver:   HP Photosmart c3100 Series, hpcups 3.11.1.19 (color, 2-sided printing)
Connection:   hp:/usb/Photosmart_C3100_series?serial=MY6CDD440?04KV
Defaults:   job-sheets=none, none media=na_letter_8.5x11in sides=one-sided

This was no good so I tried a few others and found via CUPS :631 the Photosmart c8100 driver worked.
I don't think it mattered which c8100 driver was used.

RC has the c4345 printer/scanner/fax.  Same solution as above.  He's not answering his phone. (More later) 
 
EP has the c4180.  I installed a dual boot PCLOS on her Vista tower and used the c8100 driver to get a decent print quality for images.
EP is driving somewhere, out of state. 

Stay tuned, more later maybe.
Cages

[wedgetail]

darkages
Ummm, there is enough bait for me to look into this further.    Juicy little bits need to be looked at for my own curiosity.  At the moment I working on a crippled system which can't "undo" .gz, darned.  I think on my 'full' system this is built in as a service to Konqueror.

What is the best way to unravel a .gz file? I want to do byte comparison now so I will need the native .ppd files.  Just so short on time,   , have to rely on forum members to give me a hint, sorry.

[JALU]

What is the best way to unravel a .gz file?

gzip? 

[OMSkates]

Still following progress on this thread as my HP Office Jet 6000 continues to have the same issues with black ink.  Not sure how to manually change my driver or what other driver to even try so I'm afraid I'm not much help.  I'll report any progress that I manage to make.