HPLIP ugen

[Lars Eighner]

On Sat, 1 Sep 2007, Brian Wagener wrote:

> When using HPLIP your usb printer has to use the ugen driver in order for
> all printing/scanning/status functionality to be present. The problem is, my
> printer loads as a umass device so it doesn't get detected by hplip.
>
> Does anyone know of a workaround for this? Is there anyway to force my
> printer to use ugen instead of umass? I can't just remove umass because
> other devices require it.

The only way is to use a kernel built without umass (and without ulpt).  If
you can boot without umass, you can load umass from the command line (using
kldload) after the printer is attached.  Although I have not actually tried
it, I believe you have to unload umass if for some reason you printer is
detached and you want to reattach it.  If your printer has a card device, it
will work with HPLIP, so you don't need umass for your camera, if it uses a
supported type of card.  If you must have a umass device to boot, you're
screwed, but you probably can get your printer to print with HPIJS.

I have personally tested using a kernel without umass (and of course without
ulpt) to boot in order to successfully attach a psc 1350 (which registers
electronically as a 1300), then loading umass to use with an Olympus camera.
The result was everything was fully functional (but FAX was not tested).  Of
course it was pointless to attach the Olympus as the psc 1350 will read
Olympus cards, but it seems to demonstrate that (some? many? most?) umass
devices will work this way.

Of course most people will not mind the loss of ulpt if their printer works
with ugen, but the loss of umass is more serious.  There seems to be some
awareness among the port maintainers that this is a serious problem  There
is a certain logic to having the more specific ports grab a device if they
can before the general port gets a shot --- except it doesn't work out so
well in this case, so I have no idea whether a fix is on the horizen.

-- 
Lars Eighner
http://www.larseighner.com/index.html
8800 N IH35 APT 1191 AUSTIN TX 78753-5266