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HP Envy 4500 is a printer that should be supported by the hplip driver.

I have a RPi box on a remote site, with the printer connected to the USB port of the box. I also have a top-of-the-bleeding-edge-hi-tech way to switch on the printer (phoning the remote site and asking "buddy, can you turn the printer on?") but I can't get the Pi to work with it, despite the USB cable is properly connected.

Also, I have no access to GUI, only old-school SSH

$ sudo lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 03f0:c511 Hewlett-Packard

Then I tried

$ sudo hp-probe
warning: hp-probe should not be run as root/superuser.

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.12.6)
Printer Discovery Utility ver. 4.1

Copyright (c) 2001-14 Hewlett-Packard 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.


--------------------------------
| SELECT CONNECTION (I/O) TYPE |
--------------------------------

  Num       Connection  Description                                               
            Type                                                                  
  --------  ----------  ----------------------------------------------------------
  0*        usb         Universal Serial Bus (USB)                                
  1         net         Network/Ethernet/Wireless (direct connection or JetDirect)
  2         par         Parallel Port (LPT:)                                      

Enter number 0...2 for connection type (q=quit, enter=usb*) ? 

Using connection type: usb


--------------------
| DEVICE DISCOVERY |
--------------------
                                                                                                                                   warning: No devices found on the 'usb' bus. If this isn't the result you are expecting,
warning: check to make sure your devices are properly connected and powered on.

Done.

Also made sure that both pi and root are members of lp.

How do I set up this printer? Next step will be setting up a print server on the Pi

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2 Answers 2

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You are running a very old version of hplip. Current version in Raspbian is 3.14.6, and the Envy 4500 has been supported by hplip since 3.13.6 from mid 2013. (Source: HP Linux Imaging and Printing)

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  • Okay, that's a great news. When I answered myself I had to compile the entire stuff in Raspberry, which according to @JayEye is a pain (in the stomach perhaps? maybe in the fingers... :-)). Now I could simply update the binary package to get my printer driver working. Cool!
    – usr-local-ΕΨΗΕΛΩΝ
    Commented Dec 22, 2016 at 10:14
  • Make sure you're running the latest Raspbian, though. I think JayEye led you astray, though: building is not too bad on a Raspberry Pi. Building a kernel would be unpleasant, but that's not the sort of thing I've needed to do in the last decade.
    – scruss
    Commented Dec 22, 2016 at 15:38
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The problem is that hplip is outdated for this printer model. I need to run the installer or find a ready-to-go binary package for RPi, which has not enough RAM to build the product

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  • building anything that's more than a few lines of code is a pain on the Pi. Take the time to set up a cross-build environment on a beefier machine (lots of guides on how to do that). If you plan to build stuff for the Pi, it's well worth the time investment. I'll give you a hint: building a kernel takes about 3 minutes on a 32-core, 64G ec2 instance.
    – JayEye
    Commented May 7, 2016 at 23:15
  • Unfortunately I don't plan to build stuff for the Pi. Not now. I only need this cheap machine to work as a VPN gateway and print server. I can't afford (in the sense of work-life balance) developing on the Pi. If hplip is outdated on apt repository someone with better knowledge than me could do the effort of recompiling the new version and pushing it. I am a developer myself and work a lot with build automation servers, but I am not in the position to make a public contribution for a platform/language/repo I am not proficient with. For discussion sake, I believe Suse Build Service is ahead!
    – usr-local-ΕΨΗΕΛΩΝ
    Commented May 8, 2016 at 20:30

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