HPLIP

Duplex printing does not work with HPLIP

Asked by Robert Pearson

I installed HPLIP-3.18.4 in Ubuntu MATE 17.10. LibreOffice Writer shows that long-side duplex printing is set. When I print, it does not work. I visited the forums and found many with the same complaint. I called HP and got not support (they would not even let me talk to a supervisor). HP write HPLIP but does not support it in any way. (The warranty for HPLIP is the same as for the Windows and OS X drivers - that is no warranty at all.)

I can manually work around the lack of functionality (print front page, reversed then put printed pages back in and print back, normal order).

I purchased the more expensive model printer because it has duplex-printing. It is just not supported in HP's driver. HP does not care. They could reuse a lot of the Darwin code for OS X - but they don't care.

I will never make the mistake of buying HP again!

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Nishitha Antony (ni301701) said : 		#1

Hi Robert,

Can you specify the printer model details you are testing and facing the duplex print issue?

Thanks,
Nishitha

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Mel Earp (mel-earp) said : 		#2

I too have this problem.

Ubuntu 16.04LTS
HPLIP 3.18.7, freshly installed

Newly purchased HP ENVY Photo 6230

I know that the duplexer is working because I can do a two sided copy on the printer itself. However, no amount of option changing through Ubuntu or the HPLIP device manager will persuade prints from LibreOffice to come out double sided.

I can also happily print two sided from a Windows XP running in a VirtualBox on the same machine.

Please up date the HPLIP Driver to fix this problem.

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Mel Earp (mel-earp) said : 		#3

I have also managed to run a test on an old HP Photosmart 5520 and that does duplex printing correctly, both in Ubuntu 16.04LTS with the same HPLIP 3.18.7 on the same machine, and through Windows XP in a VirtualBox, also on the same machine.

So it feels like the printer definition for the HP ENVY Photo 6230 is lacking - perhaps the same for other printers too.

So how can this be fixed please??

I am now in a situation where I have bought a replacement printer, with the more expensive option and cannot use it.

Please help.

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Mel Earp (mel-earp) said : 		#4

I can now also add that printing from gedit and the PDF Viewer DOES correctly do duplex printing on the 6230. So the culprit looks like LibreOffice.

So, I turned on CUPS debugging and printed the same two pages to both the 5520 and the 6230. Here are two very relevant extracts:

D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:02 +0100] [Job 341] argv[0]="Photosmart_5520"
D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:02 +0100] [Job 341] argv[1]="341"
D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:02 +0100] [Job 341] argv[2]="mel"
D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:02 +0100] [Job 341] argv[3]="AFPExGettingStartedGuide"
D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:02 +0100] [Job 341] argv[4]="1"
D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:02 +0100] [Job 341] argv[5]="InputSlot=Auto PageSize=A4 job-uuid=urn:uuid:88e002df-2e7a-3bd8-4c72-2fc66a7e8266 nofitplot orientation-requested=3 job-originating-host-name=localhost date-time-at-creation= date-time-at-processing= time-at-creation=1534673642 time-at-processing=1534673642 document-name-supplied=KijQz5"

D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:36 +0100] [Job 342] argv[0]="ENVY_Photo_6200"
D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:36 +0100] [Job 342] argv[1]="342"
D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:36 +0100] [Job 342] argv[2]="mel"
D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:36 +0100] [Job 342] argv[3]="AFPExGettingStartedGuide"
D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:36 +0100] [Job 342] argv[4]="1"
D [19/Aug/2018:11:14:36 +0100] [Job 342] argv[5]="Duplex=None InputSlot=Auto PageSize=CardA4 job-uuid=urn:uuid:10ecf55f-b589-349b-5dc9-b90eba9ea9df job-originating-host-name=localhost date-time-at-creation= date-time-at-processing= time-at-creation=1534673676 time-at-processing=1534673676 document-name-supplied=jWa1QO"

So why does the 6230 say Duplex=None and PageSize=CardA4? Now I suspect the 6230's ppd file.

Sure enough it has constraints:

*UIConstraints: *PageSize CardA4 *Duplex
*UIConstraints: *Duplex *PageSize CardA4

Which mean that it will refuse to do duplex on the CardA4 paper. But why does it think that CardA4 is required in LibreOffice, but not other applications??

More experiments needed.

Revision history for this message
Robert Pearson (rpearsonii) said : 		#5

Nishitha Antony (ni301701),

My printer is an HP OfficeJet Pro 7740.

Other programs like Crome print two-sided. The problem is a bug in Libre Office.

Revision history for this message
Mel Earp (mel-earp) said : 		#6

I came to the same conclusion.

My workaround is to print to PDF and then print the PDF using Document Viewer (or Chrome).

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Launchpad Janitor (janitor) said : 		#7

This question was expired because it remained in the 'Open' state without activity for the last 15 days.