Installing HP Laserjet 1012 on Ubuntu Feisty box with no GUI

This is only meant as a rough guide to the steps involved. I haven't checked it carefully and there are probably errors and omissions.

I first installed HPLIP using sudo apt-get install hplip. I then followed the instructions on how to get it set up found at http://hplip.sourceforge.net/ using the recommended driver for the HP LaserJet 1012 (HP-LaserJet_1012-hpijs.ppd) which I found at http://linuxprinting.org . It appeared to work, but whenever I tried to print a test page at the end of the hp-setup program it didn't work. I ended up with a couple versions of the same printer installed because I couldn't figure out how to delete printers from the non-GUI version of hp-setup (the particular box is an old laptop acting as a server which doesn't have a GUI).

I decided to move on for the moment and installed CUPS using sudo apt-get install cupsys.

Poked around at http://www.cups.org to figure out how to edit /etc/cups/cupsd.conf to allow access to the CUPS web interface at port 631 from a remote machine (since the box has no GUI) and how to configure CUPS so other machines on the network could connect to it to print. Made a bunch of changes, which I can’t remember, but eventually got it so I could access the CUPS web interface from my laptop by pointing to http://10.10.10.120:631/admin.

Using CUPS web interface I was able to delete all the unsuccessful printers I had created using hp-setup. When I deleted printers, etc. it prompted me for a username and password. I used root and my root password successfully. If you don't have a root password set up you may need to do some research on a workaround on cups.org to get that part to work.

I tried using the CUPS Add Printer wizard a few times to install the same recommended HPIJS driver for the HP LaserJet 1012, but whenever I tried to print a test page I got “Foomatic-rip failed” error. I poked around on Google and couldn't find anything helpful about this error.

Finally solved the Foomatic-rip failed error by deleting printer using CUPS web interface and then installing printer but choosing the HP LaserJet Series PCL 4/5 CUPS v1.2 instead of the hpijs 1012 specific driver.

I had installed Samba before using sudo apt-get install samba which presumably was necessary to allow me to share the printer with a windows machine (though I am not sure about that). I was able to successfully set up the printer as a network printer from a Windows machine following tips here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=268245