I am trying to debug a friend's HP printer and have no idea wtf I'm doing [unsolved, i gave up and so did my friend, fuck printers] (mander.xyz)

submitted 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) by siliconspoke@mander.xyz to c/linux@lemmy.ml

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I am ssh'd into his machine, and can only access cli, he can see what I do via tmux.

My friend is on Fedora 44, and has a HP103a printer which gets detected with lpstat:

~> lpstat -d
system default destination: HP-Laser-103-107-108

BUT, when I try to print with lp, he says the printer makes a little noise but nothing prints out.

I tried hp-setup but:

~> hp-setup -i -b usb
/usr/share/hplip/prnt/cups.py:705: SyntaxWarning: 'return' in a 'finally' block
  return fax_ppd,expected_fax_ppd_name, nick

HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.25.8)
Printer/Fax Setup Utility ver. 9.0

Copyright (c) 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: Defaults for each question are maked with a '*'. Press <enter> to accept the default.)

^[[error: No device selected/specified or that supports this functionality.

I understand how painful printers can be, does anyone have experience with this? I haven't used a printer with Linux before but I can provide logs.

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[-] siliconspoke@mander.xyz 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It does have cups installed, I'll try it in a bit. Looks like it wasn't enabled.

EDIT: what in the god damn

~> sudo systemctl status cups.service
● cups.service - CUPS Scheduler
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/cups.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
    Drop-In: /usr/lib/systemd/system/cups.service.d
             └─10-foomaticrip-upgrade.conf
             /usr/lib/systemd/system/service.d
             └─10-timeout-abort.conf
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2026-05-07 <redacted> +<redacted>; 7s ago
 Invocation: 8a2f6bd220ab4729b9b2bbd82d80b65a
TriggeredBy: ○ cups.path
             ● cups.socket
       Docs: man:cupsd(8)
   Main PID: 6717 (cupsd)
     Status: "Scheduler is running..."
      Tasks: 1 (limit: 4302)
     Memory: 2M (peak: 2.2M)
        CPU: 24ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/system-cups.slice/cups.service
             └─6717 /usr/bin/cupsd -l

May 07 <redacted> fedora cupsd[6717]: [Job 4] Unable to queue job for destination "HP-Laser-103-107-108".
May 07 <redacted> fedora cupsd[6717]: [Job 5] Unable to queue job for destination "HP-Laser-103-107-108".
May 07 <redacted> fedora cupsd[6717]: [Job 6] Unable to queue job for destination "HP-Laser-103-107-108".
May 07 <redacted> fedora cupsd[6717]: [Job 7] Unable to queue job for destination "HP-Laser-103-107-108".
May 07 <redacted> fedora cupsd[6717]: [Job 8] Unable to queue job for destination "HP-Laser-103-107-108".
May 07 <redacted> fedora cupsd[6717]: [Job 9] Unable to queue job for destination "HP-Laser-103-107-108".
May 07 <redacted> fedora cupsd[6717]: [Job 10] Unable to queue job for destination "HP-Laser-103-107-108".
May 07 <redacted> fedora cupsd[6717]: [Job 11] Unable to queue job for destination "HP-Laser-103-107-108".
May 07 <redacted> fedora cupsd[6717]: [Job 12] Unable to queue job for destination "HP-Laser-103-107-108".

[-] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That looks 'reasonably healthy' - at least the service is running. I haven't spent a lot of time debugging cups but the web interface may give a better view of what's going on.

Since you're on a remote system you can port-forward a local port to the remote host. ssh -L 8311:localhost:631 user@remotehost will forward "local" port 8311 to port 631 on the remote server. You can then point a web browser on your system at http://localhost:8311/ to connect to the CUPS daemon.

[-] siliconspoke@mander.xyz 2 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah I couldn't access it.

I'm tired boss :(

He says he'll just boot up windows if he ever needs to print anything.

this post was submitted on 07 May 2026

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