HP Officejet Pro 8500A A910a on Ubuntu 10.10

Written by James McDonald

November 28, 2010

Update: The latest version of hplip has the correct entries in the installer/distros.dat file. Go to the aforementioned link and follow the instructions to install on Ubuntu 10.10 and it should work well for you.

Just bought a new HP Officejet Pro 8500A A910a as my HP PSC1610 finally died after many years of use.

I ended up with the HP Officejet Pro 8500A A910a because I required a printer that would:

  • Scan to a network folder for both Windows and Linux (SAMBA)
  • Not have to be connected to a computer in order to provide print services to other computers
  • The wireless feature on the printer also will allow me to put the printer anywhere in my house

I found with the vanilla install of hplip on Ubuntu (3.10.6-1ubuntu10.1) that it didn’t have the correct PPD installed for printing to my model. So when trying to print to 4x6inch photo paper I got weird margins something like 1/2″ at the bottom and 6mm on both ends and the top instead of the option for full page print or an even border around the photo.

I tried to add the correct PPD but it was complaining about a missing print filter foomatic-rip-hplip
To correct this required downloading and installing hplip-3.10.9 from HP which had it’s own problems because it doesn’t support Ubuntu 10.10 yet.

To install hplip-3.10.9 you need to extract it ( ./hplip-3.10.9.run and it will unpack) and then edit the hplip-3.10.9/installer/distro.dat file to include the correct entries for Ubuntu 10.10. Here is my copy of hplip-3.10.9 distro.dat

6 Comments

  1. Donnie Devo

    hplipopensource dot com shows that this printer does not have ubuntu compatible fax. Were you able to get faxing to work in ubuntu?

    Reply
    • admin

      You are right. I don’t think the fax to network is working for this printer. And I haven’t plugged this printer directly into a USB port

      I did run “hp-faxsetup” and got the following

      HP Linux Imaging and Printing System (ver. 3.10.9)
      Fax Device Setup Utility ver. 0.1

      Copyright (c) 2001-9 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, LP
      This software comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY.
      This is free software, and you are welcome to distribute it
      under certain conditions. See COPYING file for more details.

      error: No devices that require fax setup found.

      Done.

      Reply
  2. Montego

    Hello!
    I have the exact same printer. Did you get the “Scan to a network folder” feature to work under Linux? My printer doesn’t seem to see my samba folders…

    Reply
  3. Bob Collins

    Has anybody been able to install this printer on any Ubuntu version and have all functions work properly via wireless? The initial install would print only. With subsequent installs, attempts to print from any OpenOffice apps results in the app freezing. I’m now unable to print from any app. Currently on 10.04.

    Any suggestions will be greatly appreciated.

    Reply
  4. DaveS

    The Officejet 8500A works great on Ubuntu 11.04. It found the printer which I have installed on a Windows 7 pc on my network. The scanning also worked great from Ubuntu 11.04. I had to upgrade to 11.04 to get everything to work.

    Reply
    • Stef

      Dear DaveS,
      I installed Ubuntu a few days ago and I need to install my-company printer (the same model you have: HP officejet pro 8500A).
      Question: where did you dowload a software suitable for Ubuntu 11.04?
      thank you!
      Stef

      Reply

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