Solved Ubuntu 22.04.4 LTS won't find network wireless printer

[truckerDave]

I have an HP Envy 6455e residing at 192.168.254.25 (connected via WiFi to my ISP router). I installed HPLIP as per the instructions on HP's website. I, also, installed CUPS.

When I run the command

hp-makeuri 192.168.254.25

, it returns with an error Device not found.

I can nmap the address

nmap -p 631 192.168.254.25

and it returns

Starting Nmap 7.80 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2024-03-16 22:45 UTC
Nmap scan report for 192.168.254.25
Host is up (0.28s latency).

PORT STATE SERVICE
631/TCP filtered ipp

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 1.96 seconds

Any ideas on how to get this thing printing? I'm probably overlooking something obvious. I normally do. I don't think it would be a firewall issue. Otherwise, I wouldn't be getting info back from Nmap. Correct?

 

[wizardfromoz]

@truckerDave I am not a wifi nor printer expert, someone else will likely help you, but did you try from the GUI Printer Settings?

Also, CUPS was already on your install. v2.4 if I am not mistaken.

Good luck

Wizard

 

[truckerDave]

My bad. This is the minimal Ubuntu server version. No GUI. I may end up swapping to a GUI version though. Me and command lines aren't exactly becoming friends.

@truckerDave I am not a wifi nor printer expert, someone else will likely help you, but did you try from the GUI Printer Settings?

Also, CUPS was already on your install. v2.4 if I am not mistaken.

Good luck

Wizard

 

[truckerDave]

@wizardfromoz

I managed to get it working.

For future reference (if someone else runs into this problem), here is what I did.

The printer in question (HP Envy 6455e) can only be connected via WiFi. It has no USB or Ethernet ports. The issue boils down to the printer being connected to my ISP's router. Which is on a different subnet than the rest of my network that is behind a pfSense firewall.

I have a cheap tp-link Archer C54 wireless router that I set to "Access Point Mode" and plugged it into my pfSense network switch. I then connected the printer to the tp-link router. Now it is on the same subnet as the rest of my system. Then it was just a matter of configuring CUPS/HPLIP on my server to use the printer.

sudo lpadmin -p PrinterName -E -v ipp://IPadress/ipp/print -m everywhere

## Change PrinterName to whatever you want your printer to be known as.
## Change IPaddress to your printer's IP adress

And for some reason, after runnung the above command, when I tried to use the printer I got this error: lp: Error - no default destination available

To solve this issue (with the help of Google), I ran the following commands

echo $PRINTER

If the reply is empty, run this

export PRINTER=PrinterName

(Change PrinterName to the exact name used above)

And after all that, my printer works great from my server. I hope this helps someone else one day.

 

[wizardfromoz]

Excellent work, Dave - thanks for sharing

Wiz