HP Color LaserJet MFP-M277dw: gap between Ubuntu version and driver version

I run my computer on Ubuntu 14.05 LTS and have recently connected a new HP Color LaserJet MFP-M277dw. The connection is local via USB.

At the point of first usage, the system did recognize the device somehow so that I could print, but I cannot scan documents yet. Full scanning functionalities are the aim.

From I learn that

You have selected Ubuntu 14.04 using the HP Color LaserJet MFP m277dw. Ubuntu 14.04 supplies HPLIP 3.11.5 by default, which does not support your printer. You must ensure latest HPLIP version (recommemded), or at least HPLIP 3.15.4 in order to use your printer with Ubuntu 14.04.

Checking on shows that, to date, Ubuntu 14.04 covers up to HPLIP 3.14.3 only.

The question is: what is the fail-safe strategy (i.e. the sequence of commands) that I should follow to get this all-in-one printer to scan?

I have run hp-check -r whose output is here.

Thanks for dealing with this.

1 Answer

My research is shared in the comments below the question post. In essence I came across two barriers:

• Nominally, the minimum HPLIP version needed for this new printer model is not supported by the Ubuntu standard toolkit. This is not a hard limitation though. I could install the latest HPLIP version 3.16.11 (so this answer has been updated, dated Feb 2017) while holding on to Ubuntu 14.04.

  • I went to to download the installer hplip-3.16.1.run in a convenient directory. This is a bash script and you may need to make it executable (say chmod 774 hplip-3.16.1.run). It starts a interactive build of hplip.
  • The interactive dialogues launched by the script are described pretty well in . It recognizes missing dependencies and installs them --- in my situation this caused no critical situation such disruptive or avalanching dependencies requests. It also took care patiently of removing the extant version 3.14.3.
  • Then, the script gave the option to run the tools hp-setup and hp-plugin. They took care of identifying the printer model, install the relevant PPD file (driver) and customize some settings such as the device names for printer and fax.
  • In the end I have printed out the test page successfully. The scanner is active (type 'scan' in the Launcher). I have not tested the fax.
  • As a last step, at the point of printing a document from an application (say, gedit), there was a claim that the printer was not connected whereas it was. To fix this, I went to the CUSP interface page and added the printer manually following the instructions displayed there. Hence the printer showed up in the tab . At this point, the printing queue moved on, much to my relief.

• The earlier upgrade process to HPLIP 3.15.4 in another computer was not fail-safe. A missing library python-dev interrupted the installation of the latest version, but the script did not fall back onto the earlier version that had been wiped out in the meantime. Nowadays the installation script for 3.16.11 takes care of dependency and conflict issues. However, for one computer out of four (all Ubuntu's 14.04), the bulk of HPLIP got installed while some important utilities, such as hp-setup and hp-plugin, failed. This problem is detailed in another post on SuperUser

Hope this helps.