Getting HPLIP to work over a network

This proved to be much more difficult and unintuitive than I ahd imagined.

HPLIP is a project to allow control of HP printer/scanner/fax/multi-function/all-in-one devices from linux. It fulfills much the same function as HP Director in Windows.

First make sure you have CUPS set up - it forms the backend to HPLIP.

Then ensure you have HPLIPS and the HP PSD driver libraries installed.

I then made use of hp-makeuri to discover the URI to setup the device in CUPS. At a command prompt, type hp-makeuri x.x.x.x where the x's are the IP address of your device on the network. The command will output a URI to use when setting up CUPS.

I beleive that HP-LIP must use a CUPS server on the same machine as it itself resides. So go to the CUPS server's web interface: http://y.y.y.y:631 where the y's are the IP address of your machine on which you are setting up HP-LIP.

Put in the name of your printer etc, and then when prompted for the type of CUPS device, choose "appsocket/HP JetDirect."

Now paste the URI given by hp-makeuri into the URI box.

Continue and when complete, start HP-LIP. You should see your HP device.