Still having problems with my USB Printer

[linuxnewbie24]

I have an HP OfficeJet G55 printer that I am trying to attach to a P3-500 machine that I have just loaded FC2 onto. The problem I have is that it is not recognizing anything on the USB ports, much less the printer. I want to use it for both printing and scanning. Therefore, I have the following questions:

1. Can anyone tell me what the fstab entries should look like for a USB printer/scanner? I think this is part of the problem

2. I have the HPOJ driver already installed. (RPM said it was already installed.) How do you activate it to make it work. Other posts have indicated that you have to have hpoj running, but I don't know how to do that.

Thanks for your help on this. :confused:

[superbnerd]

Are you sure that printer is supported by the HPOJ? Check to be sure at linuxprinting.org

[linuxnewbie24]

The HP OfficeJet G55 is definitely supported by HPOJ. My problem is that FC2 doesn't find the printer on the USB port. I have narrowed it down to not having a proper entry in fstab and am trying to find out what I should put in there. Also how to get hpoj running so that after the USB is recognized/mounted, that it will have the support to do the printing.

[crackers]

You don't mount printers via fstab - that's reserved for filesystems. Where did you get that information?

[linuxnewbie24]

Someone on these forums suggested that I look at my fstab to see if USB was there. I guess they were talking about USB flash drives. OK, so if the printer doesn't have to be mounted, how does it get recognized as being there?

[crackers]

USB devices are "automagically" detected. Let's start at the beginning: as root enter lsusb and post the output. This is what mine looks like:

# lsusb
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 002: ID 046d:c01b Logitech, Inc.
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 003: ID 045e:000b Microsoft Corp. Natural Keyboard Elite
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 059b:0034 Iomega Corp.
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Side note: yes, it's a freakin' M$ keyboard. It's the only decent "butterfly" style I could find... :(

[linuxnewbie24]

Thanks Crackers. I did what you suggested, and here is what I got ... sorta illustrates the problem:

# lsusb
#

Someone else mentioned that I had to have USB compiled into the kernel. Here is a list of my lsmod. Can you (anyone) tell me if it is there, and if not, what I have to do to get it there (keeping in mind that my goal is to do no programming or compiling to use this system?)

# lsmod
Module Size Used by
snd_pcm_oss 43129 0
snd_pcm 83529 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_page_alloc 8393 1 snd_pcm
snd_timer 25413 1 snd_pcm
snd_mixer_oss 14017 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd 45477 4 snd_pcm_oss, snd_pcm, snd_timer, snd_mixer_oss
soundcore 7713 1 snd
parport_pc 21249 1
lp 9133 0
parport 35977 2 parport_pc, lp
autofs4 20677 0
sunrpc 141861 1
tulip 40929 0
ipt_REJECT 5057 1
ipt_state 1857 6
ip_conntrack 25569 1 ipt_state
iptable_filter 2369 1
ip_tables 13889 3 ipt_REJECT, ipt_state, iptable_filter
floppy 54001 0
sg 28513 0
scsi_mod 105360 1 sg
microcode
dm_mod 47317 0
md5 3905 1
ipv6 217349 10
ext3 96937 1
jbd 66521 1 ext3


Thanks for any advice!

[crackers]

The answer, it seems, is actually quite simple - you don't have USB enabled. Do the following edits/commands as "root."

Firstly, make sure you have USB enabled in the BIOS.
Then make sure the following lines are in /etc/modprobe.conf

alias usb-controller ehci-hcd
alias usb-controller1 uhci-hcd

Issue the command /sbin/modprobe ehci-hcd uhci-hcd

Disconnect the printer from the computer (the USB connection) and then plug it back in. Try the /sbin/lsusb command again, and you should see the USB ports and any connected devices. Set up the printer via the System Settings -> Printing menu.

Note: It's quite curious as to why your setup didn't automagically enable the USB modules...

[linuxnewbie24]

I followed your suggestion but nothing happened. Can you tell me how I can know if USB is supported in the BIOS? I know that the USB devices are recognized when I have Win98 running on that system. Isn't that sad that it works on Win98 and not on Linux?

Any additional suggestions would be welcomed.

[crackers]

A (separate) piece of advice: when you reply with "it didn't work," that doesn't give anyone a lot to work with. If a particular solution does not work for you, post the same type of information that you posted before (the output from lsusb and lsmod, in this case) so we can see if there was any difference.