Device Communication Problems with HP Printer on Ubuntu 20.04

Ubuntu
,
1

Well, I did a fresh 20.04 install, no problems until last week. My HP officejet has stopped working due to “Device Communication Problems” Can’t get it to work.

2

Can you describe your problem very explictily? Thank you.

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3

It is an HP Officejet PRO 6830 connected through USB. Since last week I can neither print or scan. I did a clean 20.04 install a couple of weeks ago and everything worked just fine.

HP Device Manager gives the following error:

“HPLIP Device Status Officejet_Pro_6830 Printer (TH63A82101) Device communication error (5012)”

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4

What changes shortly before the errors starting appearing?

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5

can you run sudo hp-check -i in a terminal?

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6

that command is basically a diagnostic tool which could prove to be helpful. the post linked below isn’t the same printer or the exact same problem, but the base idea is related: hplip is now treating my printer differently than it did before (it would still be nice to know if yours had upgraded recently). the suggestion in that thread is to run hp-setup to see if you can get hplip to interact with the printer correctly again.
https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/hp-envy-110-printer-device-communication-error-5012-a-4175510156/

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7

none, normal Ubuntu updates?

8

I get this error:

INSTALLED CUPS PRINTER QUEUES

Officejet-Pro-6830

Type: Printer
Device URI: hp:/usb/Officejet_Pro_6830?serial=TH63A82101
PPD: /etc/cups/ppd/Officejet-Pro-6830.ppd
PPD Description: HP Officejet Pro 6830, hpcups 3.20.3
Printer status: printer Officejet-Pro-6830 now printing Officejet-Pro-6830-8. enabled sProcessing page 1…08:25:14 CEST
error: Device busy: hp:/usb/Officejet_Pro_6830?serial=TH63A82101
error: Device not found
error: Communication status: Failed

However: lsusb shows the printer.

Full output:
$ sudo hp-check -i
[sudo] wachtwoord voor peter:
/usr/bin/hp-check:685: SyntaxWarning: “is not” with a literal. Did you mean “!=”?
if ‘getfacl’ not in g and ‘’ is not g and ‘file’ not in g:
Saving output in log file: /home/peter/hp-check.log

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.20.6)
Dependency/Version Check Utility ver. 15.1

Copyright © 2001-18 HP Development Company, LP
This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

Note: hp-check can be run in three modes:

  1. Compile-time check mode (-c or --compile): Use this mode before compiling the
    HPLIP supplied tarball (.tar.gz or .run) to determine if the proper dependencies
    are installed to successfully compile HPLIP.
  2. Run-time check mode (-r or --run): Use this mode to determine if a distro
    supplied package (.deb, .rpm, etc) or an already built HPLIP supplied tarball
    has the proper dependencies installed to successfully run.
  3. Both compile- and run-time check mode (-b or --both) (Default): This mode
    will check both of the above cases (both compile- and run-time dependencies).

Check types:
a. EXTERNALDEP - External Dependencies
b. GENERALDEP - General Dependencies (required both at compile and run time)
c. COMPILEDEP - Compile time Dependencies
d. [All are run-time checks]
PYEXT SCANCONF QUEUES PERMISSION

Status Types:
OK
MISSING - Missing Dependency or Permission or Plug-in
INCOMPAT - Incompatible dependency-version or Plugin-version

|Gtk-Message: 08:28:23.061: Failed to load module “canberra-gtk-module”

SYSTEM INFO

Kernel: 5.4.0-40-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 23 00:01:04 UTC 2020 GNU/Linux
Host: muspelheim
Proc: 5.4.0-40-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP Tue Jun 23 00:01:04 UTC 2020 GNU/Linux
Distribution: 12 20.04
Bitness: 64 bit

HPLIP CONFIGURATION

HPLIP-Version: HPLIP 3.20.6
HPLIP-Home: /usr/share/hplip
HPLIP-Installation: Auto installation is supported for ubuntu distro 20.04 version

Current contents of ‘/etc/hp/hplip.conf’ file:

hplip.conf. Generated from hplip.conf.in by configure.

[hplip]
version=3.20.6

[dirs]
home=/usr/share/hplip
run=/var/run
ppd=/usr/share/ppd/HP
ppdbase=/usr/share/ppd
doc=/usr/share/doc/hplip-3.20.6
html=/usr/share/doc/hplip-3.20.6
icon=/usr/share/applications
cupsbackend=/usr/lib/cups/backend
cupsfilter=/usr/lib/cups/filter
drv=/usr/share/cups/drv/hp
bin=/usr/bin
apparmor=/etc/apparmor.d

Following values are determined at configure time and cannot be changed.

[configure]
network-build=yes
libusb01-build=no
pp-build=no
gui-build=yes
scanner-build=yes
fax-build=yes
dbus-build=yes
cups11-build=no
doc-build=yes
shadow-build=no
hpijs-install=no
foomatic-drv-install=no
foomatic-ppd-install=no
foomatic-rip-hplip-install=no
hpcups-install=yes
cups-drv-install=yes
cups-ppd-install=no
internal-tag=3.20.6
restricted-build=no
ui-toolkit=qt5
qt3=no
qt4=no
qt5=yes
policy-kit=no
lite-build=no
udev_sysfs_rules=no
hpcups-only-build=no
hpijs-only-build=no
apparmor_build=yes
class-driver=no

Current contents of ‘/var/lib/hp/hplip.state’ file:
Plugins are not installed. Could not access file: No such file or directory

Current contents of ‘~/.hplip/hplip.conf’ file:
warning: Could not access file: No such file or directory
<Required/Optional>

External Dependencies

cups CUPS - Common Unix Printing System REQUIRED 1.1 2.3.1 OK ‘CUPS Scheduler is running’
gs GhostScript - PostScript and PDF language interpreter and previewer REQUIRED 7.05 9.50 OK -
Gtk-Message: 08:28:24.790: Failed to load module “canberra-gtk-module”
Gtk-Message: 08:28:24.817: Failed to load module “canberra-gtk-module”
xsane xsane - Graphical scanner frontend for SANE OPTIONAL 0.9 0.999 OK -
scanimage scanimage - Shell scanning program OPTIONAL 1.0 1.0.29 OK -
dbus DBus - Message bus system REQUIRED - 1.12.16 OK -
policykit PolicyKit - Administrative policy framework OPTIONAL - 0.105 OK -
network network -wget OPTIONAL - 1.20.3 OK -
avahi-utils avahi-utils OPTIONAL - 0.7 OK -

General Dependencies

libjpeg libjpeg - JPEG library REQUIRED - - OK -
cups-devel CUPS devel- Common Unix Printing System development files REQUIRED - 2.3.1 OK -
cups-image CUPS image - CUPS image development files REQUIRED - 2.3.1 OK -
libpthread libpthread - POSIX threads library REQUIRED - b’2.31’ OK -
libusb libusb - USB library REQUIRED - 1.0 OK -
sane SANE - Scanning library REQUIRED - - OK -
sane-devel SANE - Scanning library development files REQUIRED - - OK -
libnetsnmp-devel libnetsnmp-devel - SNMP networking library development files REQUIRED 5.0.9 5.8 OK -
libcrypto libcrypto - OpenSSL cryptographic library REQUIRED - 1.1.1 OK -
python3X Python 2.2 or greater - Python programming language REQUIRED 2.2 3.8.2 OK -
python3-notify2 Python libnotify - Python bindings for the libnotify Desktop notifications OPTIONAL - - OK -
python3-pyqt5-dbus PyQt 5 DBus - DBus Support for PyQt5 OPTIONAL 5.0 5.14.1 OK -
python3-pyqt5 PyQt 5- Qt interface for Python (for Qt version 4.x) REQUIRED 5.0 5.14.1 OK -
python3-dbus Python DBus - Python bindings for DBus REQUIRED 0.80.0 1.2.16 OK -
python3-xml Python XML libraries REQUIRED - 2.2.9 OK -
python3-devel Python devel - Python development files REQUIRED 2.2 3.8.2 OK -
python3-pil PIL - Python Imaging Library (required for commandline scanning with hp-scan) OPTIONAL - 7.0.0 OK -
python3-reportlab Reportlab - PDF library for Python OPTIONAL 2.0 3.5.34 OK -

COMPILEDEP

libtool libtool - Library building support services REQUIRED - 2.4.6 OK -
gcc gcc - GNU Project C and C++ Compiler REQUIRED - 9.3.0 OK -
make make - GNU make utility to maintain groups of programs REQUIRED 3.0 4.2.1 OK -

Python Extentions

cupsext CUPS-Extension REQUIRED - 3.20.6 OK -
hpmudext IO-Extension REQUIRED - 3.20.6 OK -

Scan Configuration

hpaio HPLIP-SANE-Backend REQUIRED - 3.20.6 OK ‘hpaio found in /etc/sane.d/dll.conf’
scanext Scan-SANE-Extension REQUIRED - 3.20.6 OK -

DISCOVERED SCANNER DEVICES

Created directory: /var/lib/snmp/mib_indexes
Created directory: /var/lib/snmp/mib_indexes
Created directory: /var/lib/snmp/mib_indexes
Created directory: /var/lib/snmp/mib_indexes
Created directory: /var/lib/snmp/mib_indexes
Created directory: /var/lib/snmp/mib_indexes
Created directory: /var/lib/snmp/mib_indexes
Created directory: /var/lib/snmp/mib_indexes
Created directory: /var/lib/snmp/mib_indexes
Created directory: /var/lib/snmp/mib_indexes
Created directory: /var/lib/snmp/mib_indexes
device hpaio:/usb/Officejet_Pro_6830?serial=TH63A82101' is a Hewlett-Packard Officejet_Pro_6830 all-in-one device hpaio:/net/officejet_pro_6830?ip=192.168.2.16&queue=false’ is a Hewlett-Packard officejet_pro_6830 all-in-one
device escl:http://127.0.0.1:60000' is a ESCL Officejet Pro 6830 [TH63A82101] flatbed scanner device escl:http://2a02:a448:f0:1:725a:fff:fe9f:8eea:8080’ is a ESCL HP Officejet Pro 6830 [9F8EE9] flatbed scanner
device `escl:http://192.168.2.16:8080’ is a ESCL HP Officejet Pro 6830 [9F8EE9] flatbed scanner

DISCOVERED USB DEVICES

Device URI Model

hp:/usb/Officejet_Pro_6830?seria HP Officejet Pro 6830
l=TH63A82101

INSTALLED CUPS PRINTER QUEUES

Officejet-Pro-6830

Type: Printer
Device URI: hp:/usb/Officejet_Pro_6830?serial=TH63A82101
PPD: /etc/cups/ppd/Officejet-Pro-6830.ppd
PPD Description: HP Officejet Pro 6830, hpcups 3.20.3
Printer status: printer Officejet-Pro-6830 now printing Officejet-Pro-6830-8. enabled sProcessing page 1…08:25:14 CEST
error: Device busy: hp:/usb/Officejet_Pro_6830?serial=TH63A82101
error: Device not found
error: Communication status: Failed

PERMISSION

USB Officejet-Pro-6830 Required - - OK Node:’/dev/bus/usb/007/002’ Perm:’ root lp rw- rw- rw- rw- r–’

SUMMARY

Missing Required Dependencies

None

Missing Optional Dependencies

None

Total Errors: 1
Total Warnings: 1

Done.

2 Likes
9

how did you install hplip?

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Downloaded it from HP after my problems started and followed the instructions.

11

backtracking a step: when you said

was that after running hp-setup?

further, when you say

is it just problems with printing? and if you tried any other troubleshooting it would be helpful to know what else you tried. it doesn’t need to be a blow-by-blow just general description.

did you have a previous version of hplip and if so, did you remove it (uninstall, purger, through the software center?) before installing the present version?

this status is curious:

but i’ll wait for your replies to the questions above before looking into that.

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“I get this error:” after running hp-check -i as suggested by 01101111 I copied the error and below that the full output.

I can not print and I can not scan. Obviously there is a problem with the USB connection but when I do lsusb the printer is listed.

The troubleshooting I did was upgrade to the latest hplip version. The initial version (probably installed by Ubuntu when I installed the PC a couple of weeks ago) was upgraded by the hplip installer.

This sounds really dumb, but I do not have a single clue what is going on.

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13

checking the easiest few things first. have you rebooted both system and printer? unplugged printer from computer? tried other usb ports (if you have them)?

if so, this

is the next thing i would look at.

according to this post in the previous link it is possible your printer still thinks it has jobs to finish. the suggestion is:

Open CUPS in your browser (http://localhost:631) then select Printers . Select the printer, then Maintenance , then Cancel all Jobs (just to make sure there are no pending jobs). Then select Administration , then Delete Printer .

you can type that address (http://localhost:631) in your internet browser or you might be able to click on it and open it. then follow the suggested steps for cancelling jobs (if there are any). if there were, try running hp-setup.

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14

Thank you. Yes. Unplugged, power off, different USB port all done,

There was a printjob indeed, I cancelled it then deleted the printer and ran hp-setup

In hp-setup I get stuck in step 2/3 The printer is found and displayed with serial number. If I click “next” a button “add printer” apears, when I click it nothing happens.

This is frustrating. :slight_smile:

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15

since that answer got you part of the way there, i would suggest trying this part as well:

If hp-setup can’t see the printer, exit hp-setup and disconnect the USB cable, wait a few seconds and plug it back in in either the same jack or a different USB jack and restart hp-setup. You may want to shut the printer off and then turn it back on (wait while it goes through its little start up sequence before executing hp-setp).

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16

but the printer IS found…

17

good point.

when you installed the version of hplip from hp did you remove the previous version from your system? if so, can you share the steps of that process?

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18

i forgot to add: is your printer listed in http://localhost:631 again?

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19

It was removed as part of the HP installation process by the installer

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20

no, nothing. Seriously considering reinstalling the whole system.

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