I Loss my printer

happy to help :slight_smile:

did you try the HPLIP toolbox program in the menu? it seemed like that might discover those settings for you.

1 Like

@01101111, you are very helpful and thanks for your help, but I gave up.
Something as simple as printing that worked a week ago and now I have to go load programs to find and configure not only the printer, but also the default PPD!

[ I restored Mint using Timeshift back to Jan 05. And now the printer is working again! ]

2 Likes

It says solved? I will put my comment here, I may be of some use, I have HP envy 5640 it is wireless, once, 2018? for what ever reason, I hooked it up with the USB cable and not wireless WiFi. It would not work on WiFi after that, left it on cable, but for laptop was inconvenient, It would not see the WiFi after that, I tried every thing, finding my way all the time, all hit and miss, I tried turning modem, and ever thing off, reset modem, tried the cups thing in terminal, uninstalled printers played with drivers over and over, but a few months later i happened to go through all the driver setting again, (was updating linux mint cinnamon 18 or 19 at the time) when ever the update manager indicated, never change any or loaded any kernel’s, back to the few months later bit, I happen to go through the drivers and just changed a lot, and then it all worked, so my problem was in the setting in the drivers, where you set up a printer, Have not got a clue what I did, but all the Linux Mint printer settings never needed touching before, when ever I put a new distro on it was always automatic it just printed. So that made me sit up and take notice a bit better. What I do need is something to record the screen or what ever I am doing, so I can go back over it later. Thank you all.

1 Like

@Lennox, yes I agree. It good to document changes esp as I get older and don’t recall as well as I use to. I marked this solved b/c I was able to print again, but really the problem was not solved. I had to back out the Mint supplied updates to be able to print again. What going to happen, if I put the updates on again?

1 Like

if you open up your printer properties, do you have a uri listed under settings?

2 Likes

when i lost my printer last year, i was pretty sure it was because of a DE upgrade. if i am not mistaken, i recently saw an upgrade to cinnamon come through on my vm. i believe knowing the uri can help you reset the printer if you happen to lose it again.

1 Like

Didn’t know how to take a screen shot and have not seen this setting page before. So, I learn 2 things today. Thanks.
Here is what my pop-up looks like today when I click on printer under Admin.
Screenshot from 2020-01-17 21-32-24

So yes, if I right click on the printer pic, I get a similar screen. But when I was having the problem of not being able to print, this pop-up showed no printer and I could not perform an add.

2 Likes

if you clicked on add, did it do anything?

1 Like

@01101111, this idea of PPA’s is still not falling in place for me. Is there default / approved PPA’s for Linux and then other PPA’s for products not approved by Linux Mint. To get to the approved PPA’s I do not have to perform an ‘add-apt’?

1 Like

As I recall … Nothing.

1 Like

@abhishek’s article about ppa’s has way more info than i could remember, but my take is basically that while ubuntu has a hand in where ppa’s are located (launchpad) they are not officially supported by the distro (ubuntu or mint). so the program’s developers can create one, but ubuntu/mint hasn’t tested it to make sure it works with all of their other programs.

a good example is timeshift. i originally installed it from the ppa. since i had heard about it from an itsfoss article, i trusted their reputation and guidance so i added it to my system. now it is in the ubuntu repository.

hplip seems to have followed a similar path. you had a ppa that you tried to add which looks like it was for older versions and now it is in the ubuntu repository as well.

1 Like

another place you can go to add a printer if that program isn’t working on your system is by going to http://localhost:631/admin in your browser. it provides similar cups functionality in that you can add and manage printers and even print jobs.

the place where knowing that uri can come in handy is if you can get to the add a printer dialog, it may make it easier to install than hplip did. i tried adding mine again by copying the uri and it made quick work of finding the drivers for me.

1 Like

I’m pretty sure that the kernel update to 4.15.0-74 is what caused my system not to see the printer for when I ‘Timeshifted’ the update out, the printer returned. Now I see another kernel update to 5.3.0.26.95. These kernel updates are coming really fast. Counting these last 2, there has to be at least 6 kernel updates in the past month or 2. What do you think is going on with the kernel?

1 Like

since bodhi leaves kernel updates strictly up to the user, i don’t see a lot of the ones that you get with mint. i did notice in my 19.3 vm and the ubuntu 18.04.3 vm (which came with 5. something out of the box) that there have been a lot of kernel updates, but i don’t know what drives those at all.

1 Like

Oh, Linux Mint also leaves kernel updates as well as all updates up to the users. And there are lots of opinions about applying kernel updates. Some – keep your system up-to-date, others – if it not broken, don’t fix it. I was just trying to tell you that I see 2 kernels updates available to be applied to my system.

1 Like

understood. i was just trying to explain that since i don’t get even kernel upgrade suggestions, i don’t know what rhyme or reason the recent influx of them would be about.

1 Like

after a little more reading here, i found that you can use lpinfo -v to find a printer’s uri. this page explains that you can find the driver or ppd with lpinfo -m and then how to set up a printer with lpadmin -p.

2 Likes

Gee, dont know, go through the updates one by one see what they are and what they do. and install a couple then start up see if it works, they one or two more, bit slow, but you can track down a problem like that sometimes, don’t know what the experts do, I guess they would know all about the library’s.

1 Like

You don’t get updates between releases to your system with Bodhi? :thinking:

1 Like

Well @Lennox, you know a lot more about Linux then I do, if you know what the updates actually do. I read the description, but I just see the updates as changes to my system to keep it up-to-date as in correcting problems and/or adding features. As with any programming change, it can cause an unforeseen problem(s). I know b/c I used to be a programmer. That why we take backups. I take both Timeshift and Clonezilla backups.

2 Likes