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I am **so** not a guru.

I got this nice mul­ti­func­tion print­er+s­can­ner+­copier, called HP PSC 1410.

Cheap, too!

Works nice, even!

Ex­cep­t... it can't be net­worked. You sim­ply can't, us­ing HP's soft­ware, print on that thing from any oth­er com­put­er on your net­work.

Ex­cep­t, that is, if they are both run­ning win­dows XP. Not even oth­er ver­sions of win­dows will work. And HP says so. (Cor­rec­tion, maybe not even with XP?)

On Lin­ux? Well, it shoul­da kin­da work, says lin­ux­print­ing.­com.

And then I sup­pose I could ex­port a post­script queue and let the lin­ux driv­er do the job, and get some print­ing done from the must-be-win­dows-98 note­book run­ning the le­gal case man­age­ment soft­ware.

But you know what? I am so tired of this crap. It does­n't work right on Lin­ux. It's crip­pled on win­dows. What ex­act­ly are we sup­posed to run for this piece of en­gi­neer­ing to work?

Why does this, a rather new mod­el, lack a fea­ture ev­ery god­for­sak­en print­er has had since the dawn on Win­dows For Work­groups 3.11?????

I know my page is read by no win­dows print­ing gu­ru, but I re­al­ly can use a hand here.

Kurt Pfeifle / 2006-05-11 23:50:

linuxprinting.com is the wrong site to look for support.

linuxprinting.org should be better for you :-)

HP supports all of its models with a Free (as in liberty) driver (based on the ijs Ghostscript device that serves as an interface to communicate with the real external driver).

See also here: hplip.sourceforge.net/ and here: supported models.

Kurt Pfeifle / 2006-05-11 23:59:

Oh, and BTW it is not the driver developers' fault that Microsoft does not like to open up their proprietary networking protocols, and that they force the Samba Team to reverse engineer every single (encrypted) bit that goes over the wire.

You can as the European Union about that; they are currently running a lawsuite against MS because of that.

Install an IPP print client on the Win98 box (use the MS one if you want), make the CUPS server not asking for authentication (because MS has not implemented the IPP standard, but rather their own proprietary auth scheme), make the Win98 client

a) either use the native MS driver print to a "raw" queue

b) or use a generic PostScript driver print to a fully setup CUPS queue

and you are done.

Roberto Alsina / 2006-05-12 00:15:

Kurt, you misunderstand me.

I knew about .org, I just typed it wrong.

I got it working on Linux using hpijs.

The problem is that the windows driver doesn't let you use it on a remote printer.

It's a driver for local printers only!

No problem whatsoever with samba, I need to have this connected to a windows box, because it's needed there (for scanning).

But if I connect it to the windows box, there is no way to print over the network to it.

I can print over the network from a linux box to another.

But it seems to be impossible to print over the network to a **windows** box that has this printer installed.

Kurt Pfeifle / 2006-05-12 00:53:

No, I don't misunderstand you :-)

The Windows driver *does* let you use it via a remote computer. See here for details:

Samba printing with a non-CUPS spooler
Samba printing with CUPS

I said it before, and now I repeat it with different words, so they may stay stuck with you:

*Whatever* the native Windows printer driver is like -- you can *always* print from the Windows box to a CUPS server, either through Samba or directly (using IPP or LPR/LPD); just install the damn driver on that Win box and make sure that CUPS accepts "raw" print jobs (because the driver on the Windows client does send fully prepared data).

Your problem is not the driver, your problem is the general and full scope of Windows Unix interoperation via Samba, that you seem to be not familiar with. And unfortunately, this is not an easy to master art that can be taught or learned in an hour...

Roberto Alsina / 2006-05-12 01:18:

Please assume I am not a moron, ok ;-)

No, you don't understand me. I **can't** connect the damn thing to the linux box. That is not an option.

I have one linux box, two windows boxes (XP and 98).

The printer needs to be connected to the XP box. No choice there.

I can print from Linux if I connect it to the linux box. But I can't keep the printer there.

I can't print from Linux to the windows box. It locks the XP printer queue.

I can print from any box to the printer if it's on the linux box (using a postscript queue). Samba works ok. CUPS works ok. But I can't keep the printer there. I don't even need to install windows IPP, really.

I have a problem here even **without any linux or samba involved** because WINDOWS can't share this printer and WINDOWS doesn't let me assign the driver to a printer in another host, because the WINDOWS driver is broken.

If you check the HP URL I posted, you see all the drivers say they have NO NETWORKING support.

Larry / 2006-05-12 06:32:

I've run into this before. It's a deliberate driver problem. They don't WANT you to be able to share the printer. HP (and all the others, I'm sure) wants you to buy one of their expensive network printers instead.

Why can't you network XP Home? Because Microsoft deliberately cripples it so that you can pay even more to get XP Pro.

Why can't you network your HP inkjet? Because HP deliberately cripples it so that you can pay even more to get a network printer.

It really is just software. I have an HP Deskjet 722c. Old, even uses a parallel port. On my old Win98 box, I had it happily shared between 3 computers. Once I added Win2k to the mix, and switched to the Win2k drivers (Win98 ones didn't work), suddenly I couldn't network it. It simply refused to do so. It's a completely artificial limitation in the driver.

Reason #419 I am glad I moved to Linux at home.

Best advice I can offer you is to get scanning working under Linux and dump Windows completely. That's the only way to make things work in Windows: Don't use Windows.

Kurt Pfeifle / 2006-05-12 10:39:

At least you've now clearly stated what your problem is: you want/must attach the printer to the WinXP box (the print server), and you want to send jobs to it from a Linux box and a Win98 box (the print clients).

But sending from the Linux print client *is* possible. Always! (In a very generic sense, though. It does not mean that you necessarily can share the *driver* as well, but you can certainly send jobs from another network node to a shared Windows printer.)

It is called "printer sharing". Windows can do that for any locally installed print queue, whatever HP says (I assume they are talking about "network printing" in a different sense when they say it is not supported; they mention "no ethernet or WLAN" which could simply mean that the printer does not have such a physical interface....).

You have 3 options:

* Enable the IPP printing on the XP box (I hope it is not WinXP "Home"... or is it?). It means you need to install/enable the IIS as well. In this case, use the CUPS "http://" backend on the Linux side. (Note, the exact device URI to be used for accessing a shared printer on a Windows-based IPP print server is "http://[windows-IP-address]:80/printers/[printersharename]

* Install/enable a software that turns your Windows 98 box into an LPR/LPD server. (Google for "LPR Spooler" to find one). In this case, use the CUPS "lpd://" backend on the Linux side.

* Rely on the SMB networking protocol on Windows; it covers printing too. In this case, use the CUPS "smb://" backend on the Linux side.

In all three cases you need to find and install a fully working printer driver on your Linux box. Sending PostScript to the WinXP print server will of course not work. (Be aware, that the "smb://" backend used by CUPS requires the "smbspool" utility shipped by Samba.)

Sending from the Win98 box is also possible, *if* there is a driver for that OS offered by HP. (*That* I don't know).

Your "locked" WinXP printer queue is interesting, though. This could be caused by the fact that the client had sent a "wrong" file format which it is unable to process.

----------

Larry's Windows-internal driver problem is s.th. entirely different. And it is not a "completely artificial limitation in the driver" either, inflicted upon you just by an arbitrary mind.

The background is this: before Win 2000, Windows printer drivers were running in Kernel space. A crashing printer driver (and many manufactures of cheapie boxes shipped cheapie drivers) created a nice Blue Screen.

From Win 2000 and later, printer driver architecture is different. Printer drivers are running in user space now (by default; but of course, for compatibility reasons, there is still the option to install driver versions into Kernel space, if you want to take the risk). I'm not saying it is easy or obvious, but it is possible.

I'm not saying your ranting is unjustified, but it uses the wrong "facts" to support it.

8-P

Ian Whiting / 2006-05-12 11:32:

I use HP JetDirect print server boxes with my printers to do network printing. It works really well for printing.

One of my printers is an OfficeJet, slightly older than yours though, I can access the scanning through a web browser pointed at the print server.

Roberto Alsina / 2006-05-12 11:43:

Kurt: using smb backend and the working driver (the one that prints correctly when the printer is directly connected to linux) blocks the XP printer queue.

I suppose I could try the IIS/IPP route (Is IIS even included with XP?)

And no, there is no "network-capable"driver from HP for 98. I mentioned. I linked it.

How can my ranting not be justified? All other printers I had could be shared? This one, newer and "better" can't unless, maybe, if one jumps through weird hoops.

It's not a rant about linux at all, really. It's about windows and HP.


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