On Wed 12 Feb 2025 at 16:40:24 (+0000), Chris Green wrote: > Jeffrey Walton <noloa...@gmail.com> wrote: > > On Wed, Feb 12, 2025 at 8:20 AM Chris Green <c...@isbd.net> wrote: > > > > > > When I run CUPS 'add printer' with a new (to the network) Laserjet > > > M15W I see four possible printers to add:- > > > > > > HP LaserJet M15w (FD27B6) (HP LaserJet M14-M17) > > > HP LaserJet M14-M17 (driverless) (HP LaserJet M14-M17) > > > HP LaserJet M14-M17 (driverless) (HP LaserJet M14-M17) > > > HP LaserJet M15w (HP LaserJet M14-M17) > > > > > > So which one should I choose? Does it matter? > > > > See <https://wiki.debian.org/Printing>, > > <https://wiki.debian.org/SystemPrinting> and > > <https://wiki.debian.org/CUPSDriverlessPrinting>. > > > None of them really addresses the problem of which of the above to > choose though. It would seem that 'driverless' is the way to go > nowadays and my printer is new enough. However why am I offered two > 'driverless' printer options, and for that matter what are the other two?
ISTR that Add Printer would list the same printer more than once on account of there being more than one filter available. For example, my old HP990C would list Cups+Gutenprint, Foomatic/pcl3, /cdj550 and /chp2200, hpcups, and two varieties of hpijs, seven in all. As for your list, you might be able to determine whether the first and last are using an HP driver. The difference between the two could be that one specifies a individual printer (with partial MAC FD27B6, is that so?), and the other might yield any one from a battery of them. For the driverless pair, the difference could be the filter that's used. As I prefer using a commandline, I've set up my current printer thus: $ driverless ipp://Brother%20HL-L2390DW._ipp._tcp.local/ $ # lpadmin -p brother -v ipp://Brother%20HL-L2390DW._ipp._tcp.local/ -E -m driverless:ipp://Brother%20HL-L2390DW._ipp._tcp.local/ # That uses the cups-filters PPD generator, which is alleged to be kept better up-to-date. Alternatively, I could've set up the cups PPD generator with the command line: # lpadmin -p brother -v ipp://Brother%20HL-L2390DW._ipp._tcp.local/ -E -m everywhere # > The other thing that had me really confused for a while was that some > of the printers offered are 'discovered' and these will appear by > themselves without actually adding them using CUPS. > > In the end one of the 'discovered' driverless printers seems to be > working OK, though I'm not at all clear why it wouldn't work the > first time round when it would print CUPS test pages but not from any > applications. (I raised that in another thread) I prefer the queue setup because my old printer, an HP8500 A910, happily identifies itself as a printer even though it has two dead printheads and four empty ink containers. (I keep it for scanning.) Here's what I see on a system with a queue (brother) set up: $ lpstat -t scheduler is running system default destination: PDF device for brother: ipp://Brother%20HL-L2390DW._ipp._tcp.local/ device for PDF: cups-pdf:/ brother accepting requests since Fri Feb 7 20:49:49 2025 PDF accepting requests since Thu Jan 23 09:39:51 2025 printer brother is idle. enabled since Fri Feb 7 20:49:49 2025 printer PDF is idle. enabled since Thu Jan 23 09:39:51 2025 $ and this system has no queue: $ lpstat -t scheduler is running system default destination: PDF device for Brother_HL_L2390DW: implicitclass://Brother_HL_L2390DW/ device for Brother_HL_L2390DW@BRW90324B000000.local: implicitclass://Brother_HL_L2390DW%40BRW90324B000000.local/ device for PDF: cups-pdf:/ Brother_HL_L2390DW accepting requests since Sun Oct 22 09:09:44 2023 Brother_HL_L2390DW@BRW90324B000000.local accepting requests since Sun Oct 22 10:00:10 2023 PDF accepting requests since Fri Sep 8 14:19:07 2023 printer Brother_HL_L2390DW is idle. enabled since Sun Oct 22 09:09:44 2023 printer Brother_HL_L2390DW@BRW90324B000000.local is idle. enabled since Sun Oct 22 10:00:10 2023 printer PDF is idle. enabled since Fri Sep 8 14:19:07 2023 $ (I've cut the HP, and zeroed six bytes of the MAC.) > Yes, I know, printing is always somewhat difficult to get going. MUCH easier than it used to be. Cheers, David.
