There are two methods to ask a printer to identify itself: 1. lsusb
2. The IEEE-1284 device ID, on USB requested via IOCTLs, see the following simple programs http://www.linuxprinting.org/download/printing/usb_id_test.c http://www.linuxprinting.org/download/printing/getusbprinterid.pl both to be called with "<program name> /dev/usblp0". The second method is also available for parallel printers, use cat /proc/sys/dev/parport/parport*/autoprobe* to obtain the device IDs for the printer(s) on the parallel port(s). Unfortunately, the firmware of some printers is not consistent and gives two different results with the different methods. lsusb sometimes does not give manufacturer/model info at all whereas the device ID always gives manufacturer/model info and if the device IDs of two printers are equal, they accept exactly the same info and therefore work with the same driver and PPD. Therefore, when using only one of the two methods it is more reliable to assign the correct driver to a printer when polling the device ID. The numerical vendor/product IDs, which lsusb reads out are completely unsuitable for printers, as for example nearly all Epson printers have the same vendor/product IDs. Therefore I switched the printer detection from vendor/product IDs to the IEEE-1284 device ID in Mandriva Linux (printerdrake) years ago. CUPS and HPLIP use IEEE-1284 device IDs and modern Linux distributions usually detect printers through CUPS (and this triggers also detection through HPLIP, due to HPLIP's CUPS backend "hp"). In your case of HP printers every HP printer is sold in different flavours for different markets. The hardware of a series of printers is equal, but they come with different Windows toys or different input voltages. HP gives similar model names, like DeskJet 5100 and DeskJet 5160. The IEEE-1284 device IDs are the same in such a case (for example "DeskJet 5100 series"). The problem is only cosmetic, as all printers of such a series work with the same driver. So your 5150 will work without problems. The only solution for this bug report would be to probe every detected printer also with "lsusb" and if there is manufacturer/model info use this only for the menu/list entry and use the IEEE-1284 device ID only for selecting the correct PPD/driver. Or one simply adds a text like the following to the auto-detection results list in the printer setup tools: Note: Printers do not necessarily identify themselves with the model name as specified on the printer's case, but the precision of the self identification is sufficient for selecting the correct driver. -- HP Deskjet 5150 shows up as an HP Deskjet 5100 in various places https://launchpad.net/bugs/79607 -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
