how to find laser printers that work on centos 8

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iwishitwouldwork
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how to find laser printers that work on centos 8

Post by iwishitwouldwork » 2021/09/03 23:53:17

I'm frustrated so that may show up in my tone.

My current printer is out of ink. It's old. I could either replace the printer or risk being unable to get toner at all. I'm leaning toward a new printer as much as it pains me. So I had this other printer (which I now hate) and it won't connect up to either my centos 8 machine or this mac big sur OS machine. I need this to run on centos 8 -- I rarely use the mac and, frankly, don't much care for it. But my issues with trying to get this "new" (really just different) printer to work brought home a solid point: How do I shop for a new printer that will hook up to centos 8?

I've been away from printers for a long time. In the old days a PPD file was easy to come by, and once you had that -- confusing and tedious to deal with it might be -- you could be somewhat confident that things would work eventually. Now it seems I don't know where to begin. I'm not crazy about using avahi but if that's the new thing, so be it. (Back in the day I heard some bad things about avahi vis-a-vis security.)

My google-fu isn't working. Or maybe it is, but I just can't tell that it is. What's the current state of the art?

scottro
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Re: how to find laser printers that work on centos 8

Post by scottro » 2021/09/04 00:49:47

I don't know if this is still made, but I see it apparently in stock at B&H Photo.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/ ... 460fw.html

Might be on Amazon as well. At any rate, I got this printer several years ago. I got Samsung because I didn't want to pay HP's high prices on toner. Two weeks after I bought the printer, HP bought Samsung's printer division. Sigh.

At any rate, I think Linux drivers are available on either Samsung's or HP's site, and it's worked quite well for me on Linux and FreeBSD. To get it to scan if attached by network, you have to edit /etc/sane.d/xerox_mfp.conf, putting tcp <ip address> where it has the USB line. It's not terribly fast, I think it is 19 ppm for B&W and 4 ppm for color.
If you don't need color, I have had good luck with Brothers laser printers. They also supply Linux drivers on their site.

As for toners, despite HP having bought Samsung's printer division and charging high prices for toner, I have, the two times I have had to replace toner in about 5 years, I have been able to find inexpensive generics on Amazon that have worked perfectly.
New users should check the FAQ and Read Me First pages

iwishitwouldwork
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Joined: 2014/02/08 14:56:39

Re: how to find laser printers that work on centos 8

Post by iwishitwouldwork » 2021/09/04 06:28:54

That's an idea, thank you.

It occurred to me to look for ppd files. I found a bunch in

Code: Select all

/usr/share/ppd
Well, in there I found two directories.

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HP  cupsfilters
Bottom line is, there's a zillion HP ppd files, but not for other manus. This puzzles me. Is HP the only manu to use ppd files?

Anyway, I guess that means that any printer for which there's a ppd file will work.

I tried this. Activities -> settings -> devices -> printers -> printer details
and then I'm presented with a window that contains a button "search for drivers" "select from database" "install ppd file". Suppose you click on "select from database". This presents a window with a manu column and a driver column. I'm guessing that means all of those printers should work.

Well, I tried my printer (canon tr8500) and it could not find a driver. I tried to select something "close" (ha!) from the database, no joy.

Okay, so, we assume the listed printers work. Mine isn't listed, that's my fault, really. But now, there's waay too many printers to choose from. It's all well and good to pick a printer from the list(s), but it could be in a list and still be quite old. Chasing down a working, modern-ish printer may turn out to be a lot of work. And right now it's particularly vexing hunting for printers because, I guess because of the virus, many printer models are out of stock even if they are current models. Is there a better way?

Anybody know if forcing the RHEL8 hplip packages to install on Centos 8 works? I tried this, and got this:

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rpm -i hplip-3.21.6-RHEL8-x86_64.rpm 
error: Failed dependencies:
	/usr/bin/python is needed by hplipfull-3.21.6-0.x86_64
	libImageProcessor.so()(64bit) is needed by hplipfull-3.21.6-0.x86_64
	libImageProcessor.so(VERS_1.0)(64bit) is needed by hplipfull-3.21.6-0.x8
6_64


rpm -i --force --nodeps hplip-3.21.6-RHEL8-x86_64.rpm

That last line forced it in, but I don't have a good way to know whether it works. I believe the missing library is actually supplied by an hplip package (I did find the file on my system at one point) and the complaint about python is bogus -- I definitely have that, though it may be python 3.x and I fear the rpm wants 2.x . I thought centos was a "preview" of what RHEL would be. The RHEL8 dist has a more recent version of hplip than centos 8.

Thoughts?

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Re: how to find laser printers that work on centos 8

Post by scottro » 2021/09/04 13:00:28

It should be identical to RHEL, but Stream will have some things that RHEL doesn't have. They may have dropped some packages too, this happens, with say, very old ethernet drivers.

Are you familiar with the provides option. You can try

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dnf provides */libImageProcessor.so
which would tell you what package provides that.

A ppd file is used for all printers, not just HP. It's just that HP has a LOT of printers. I think that these days, cups will often dynamically create the ppd file, rather than keeping all of them on disk.

Also, you should just be able to install hplip with dnf install, rather than trying to get the RedHat one to work.
I don't have stream on anything right now, but they almost certainly have an hplip package.
New users should check the FAQ and Read Me First pages

lightman47
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Re: how to find laser printers that work on centos 8

Post by lightman47 » 2021/09/04 21:01:48

My RHEL 8 installations quickly found/installed my (network connected) "HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277" HP-HP-ColorLaser... -MFP-M278-M281.

That said, I always install the foomatic packages.

iwishitwouldwork
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Re: how to find laser printers that work on centos 8

Post by iwishitwouldwork » 2021/09/04 21:38:10

libImageProcessor comes from the RHEL8 hplip packages.
On centos 8, checking the centos repos:

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dnf provides */libImageProcessor.so
Updating Subscription Management repositories.
Unable to read consumer identity

This system is not registered with an entitlement server. You can use subscripti
on-manager to register.

Last metadata expiration check: 1:24:40 ago on Sat Sep  4 13:49:21 2021.
Error: No Matches found
I was interested in a printer that requires a later version of hplip
than exists on Centos. RHEL8 has a later version than centos 8.

I've tried to install hplip-3.21.6.run and the RHEL8 packages
but always hit a brick wall of dependency issues. It even complains
that libusb is not there, even though it is. I guess it needs a
later version.


I set up a raspberry pi as a print server. The pi can print to itself.
I shared the printer, and so on. Sorry, this is a printer I'm using to TEST. It's not the printer I was interested in.

On the centos side I cleaned out all of the local references to the
printer and added in the print server flavor of the printer.
I was unable to make the print server the default destination
until I made guesses at the driver.

When I try to print (from firefox) the thing claims it's printing,
but the print server does not show an active job at all, the
printer displays no activity.

I tried installing foomatic but that didn't seem to help. Maybe I didn't push enough buttons to really try it, though.

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TrevorH
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Re: how to find laser printers that work on centos 8

Post by TrevorH » 2021/09/04 21:51:03

I was interested in a printer that requires a later version of hplip
than exists on Centos. RHEL8 has a later version than centos 8.
No, your command fails on both CentOS and RHEL 8.

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[root@centos8 ~]# dnf provides */libImageProcessor.so
Error: No Matches found
[root@rhel8 ~]# dnf provides */libImageProcessor.so
Error: No Matches found
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

iwishitwouldwork
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Joined: 2014/02/08 14:56:39

Re: how to find laser printers that work on centos 8

Post by iwishitwouldwork » 2021/09/05 14:09:36

Okay. I thought RHEL8 had hplip-3.21.6 on it. The hplip-3.21.6.run file certainly has it, though.

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find . -name libImage\*
./hplip-3.21.6/prnt/hpcups/libImageProcessor-x86_32.so
./hplip-3.21.6/prnt/hpcups/libImageProcessor-x86_64.so

I glanced at the ipp protocol on Wikipedia. It seemed to me that if I set up a print server on a machine that could understand lots and lots of strange printers that a print client could use any and all printers that the server understood, even if the client did not. In other words, it seemed to me that print clients would not need the drivers for the various printers on them, they would simply ship the job to a print server that did have the drivers. I can see how that would be true and false. But I can't figure out the correct answer. In my one test -- the answer appeared to be that all machines needed drivers but the test itself was a poor one. I don't know enough to say that there wasn't something else wrong with my test.

MartinR
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Re: how to find laser printers that work on centos 8

Post by MartinR » 2021/09/05 17:17:56

@lightman47
Thanks for noting that the 277 is the correct driver for the MFP 281. I hadn't found it and was using generic which limits possibilities.
"HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M277" HP-HP-ColorLaser... -MFP-M278-M281

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