HPLIP

AiO products - are these all PSC units with scanners?

Asked by Robby Workman

I know this is a strange question, but are all of the AiO products PSC units with scanners (or do they all have scanners, or are all of the combination units with scanners considered AiO devices)? :)

Here's the issue: we patch 55-hpmud.rules to do this:
# Check for AiO products (0x03f0xx11).
ATTR{idVendor}=="03f0", ATTR{idProduct}=="??11", OWNER="root", GROUP="lp", MODE="0660"
instead of the default MODE="0666" and we do this for each of the lines in that file.

This creates a minor problem for devices with built-in scanners, as the /dev/bus/usb node to which the scanner is bound is created with gid=lp, so now users (unexpectedly) have to be a member of the lp group instead of scanner group in order to scan.

I seem to recall older releases of hplip+udev would create two different nodes in /dev/bus/usb (one with lp group and one with scanner group), so this wasn't an issue, but now with hplip-2.8.2 and udev-118, it is. Anyway, here's my question(s): would we catch all of the combination print/scan units by making that AiO check assign GROUP="scanner" instead of lp, and if so, are you guys aware of any drawbacks to that?
More importantly, are we missing something obvious here that's a better (or more correct) solution?

Thanks,
-RW

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Aaron Albright
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David Suffield (david-suffield) said : 		#1

All the HP product divisions have all-in-one devices now (ie: scanning). This not only includes Aio products, but also Photosmart, Business Inkjets, Deskjets and Laserjets. So you cannot assume only AiO products have a built-in scanner.

Since HPLIP does not support stand alone scanners, all HPLIP devices need to belong to the "lp" group in order to print.

Is there a problem making "lp" a member of the "scanner" group for console users? What distro are you using?

-dave

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Robby Workman (rworkman) said : 		#2

Hi Dave,

First, thanks for the response, especially the information that all product divisions have all-in-one devices; that shoots my idea for a solution out of the water... This is on Slackware -current (development toward next release). I was hoping to find a way to avoid adding users to the lp group only for scanner use, as it's not needed at all for them to be able to print.

Why would I add the 'lp' user to the 'scanner' group? I don't see how that will address the problem at all (but I'll leave open the possibilty that I'm missing something obvious) :)
Essentially, we need to make the *device* belong to both the 'lp' and 'scanner' groups, but we also know that such is not possible :/

-RW

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Best Aaron Albright (albrigha-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#3

Robby,

Maybe this will answer your questions? The thread is ongoing but maybe gives some hints.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/hplip/+bug/195782

Hope this helps.

A

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Robby Workman (rworkman) said : 		#4

Hi Aaron,

Well, it's comforting to know that there are others struggling with this - I thought it was just us :)
While it doesn't *solve* the problem, it *does* answer the questions I asked, and it looks like some sort of solution show up sooner or later. In other words, big thanks for linking me to that other thread; I'll follow it now.

-RW

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Robby Workman (rworkman) said : 		#5

Thanks Aaron Albright, that solved my question.