Newest HP Printers

[Anonymous]

Hi All,
I have an interesting issue that I'm hoping to have some input on. I have been doing just fine with our existing printer setup with drivers and such. We run a bunch of different models(school district) of HP. My issue is with the newest models. HP is no longer posting the drivers to do the installs and push them with Casper, instead they are posting some garbage application that identifies the printer and then puts the drivers where they need to be. I have tried a capture after doing this yet on a test machine it always shows up as a generic with a message that I need to install the manufacture software. Anyone have any insight to this? The printers we are using are the M452 and the M402 newest models. Thanks!

Nate

[LukeMason]

I thought I'd chime in here.

Our primary concern is the package size, since we have a lot of remote schools with very limited bandwidth.

The Apple HP Driver pkg is several hundred MB, and the "Easystart" app pulls down over 100 MB as well.

I've started using composer to cut the size down, and I've been pretty successful.

For example, our new printer this year is the "HP Laserjet Enterprise M608". I've managed to cut the EasyStart installation (which I think was 140MB) down to slight less than 1MB (927KB). It only took me about 5 minutes or so (not including the initial download time) and it works like a charm.

I've attached a picture of the final package payload in Composer.

[networkadmin]

@kstrick THANK YOU for that key hint! The exact path on my download was different, as someone pointed out, and you're right that it downloaded to one place then moved to another to actually install. I went into /var/folders and used

find . -iname hp-printer-essentials*

to home in on it. :)

[tangerinehuge]

Another option:
If you do a 'ps -A | grep hp-printer-essentials' while Easy Start is installing, you can determine which pkg it is pulling from the ftp server. You'll need to do it right after the download finishes:

$> ps -A|grep hp-printer-essentials
51515 ?? 0:00.28 /usr/sbin/installer -verboseR -target / -pkg /var/folders/6z/njcg8drx2dl7bsqhz4qq4bnm0000gn/T/com.hp.hp-easy-start/SoftwareComponentInstallations/5180B11B-E879-43F9-9EE5-3C20B808C365/hp-printer-essentials-S-5_3_2.pkg

[mrhollywoodgate]

@dstranathan Any luck figuring out the differences in the package names and what they mean? I too am looking for the best, broadest package to install to make up for where the HP package from Apple falls short, since we deploy all sorts of HP models.

[Nix4Life]

Well it looks like the HP love is back...HP Printer Software Update 5.1 dropped today. I checked one of the inkjetB pkgs with SP and saw a bunch of printers from 2015:

[cchichester]

Does anyone know if we still need to use the hp_printer_essential pkgs? I've been using the 5.0 update from apple in conjunction with that. Is the 5.1 comprehensive?

[demaioj]

@LukeMason Thanks for that. Have you had any issues after when you've installed the printer? I followed your directory structure and pulled the files for one of my printers but when I went to run a test page it still wanted to download the drivers from HP. I ran composer to verify and it ended up downloading the entire HP Printer Apple Software Update.

[tluebker]

Hi Folks,

I sadly can not find the PPD file for the HP LJ M452dn in the Apple HP Printer Software Update 5.1. And all the FTP Links for HP are not working anymore :-( Does anybody got an updated link ? I found the M252n driver in the Apple Package does it by any chance work with the M452(sadly can not test as I do not have the M452 office) Or can I edit the ppd to make it work ?

Cheers,

Thomas

[apizz]

@tluebker Just tried the HP FTP link I have and it still works for me. Try this:

[ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/](ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/)

[tluebker]

thanks man :-)

[mccallister]

Okay, let's suppose you run the easy start on a computer running 10.12 and capturing it with composer.

My question: What drivers exactly is it downloading, and for what OS versions?

Would it just be downloading drivers compatible with 10.12, anything from 10.10 and above, or what?

I don't want to install on machines and find out the driver really isn't compatible with a different OS version and it causes kernel panics.

HP's easy start crap is not acceptable in an enterprise environment. I have over 500 Macs, 80+ network printers, and different OS versions. An "easy start" to me is a recipe for chaos

[Nix4Life]

@mccallister If you use the link above that @aporlebeke posted, download the latest few packages, and run them through Suspicious Package, you can see the drivers and PPDs

[kkono]

Late response, but I think this has the M452dn drivers

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/hp-printer-essentials-S-5_7_5.pkg

[aghali]

Once you run the HP Easy Start app and go through the process of finding your desired printer by searching for it by name or IP address
Go to "~/Library/Logs/HP Easy Start.log" in there you'll find the URL to download the actual package needed.

In my case, it looked like this "Start downloading the file from HTTP://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/hp-printer-essentials-S-5_7_5.pkg"

I was able to hit that URL in a browser and download the .pkg file, then create a policy to install the package, adds the printer and runs a script to disable printer sharing which gets enabled by default when you push that type of policy.

Hope this helps!

[dontmakememac]

This thread has been a lot of help to me, thank you!

I was hoping someone might be able to help me with my deployment.

Right now, I am utilizing this script in a policy: https://github.com/MScottBlake/mac_scripts/blob/master/installPrinterFromWindowsPrintServer/installPrinterFromWindowsPrintServer.sh

It calls a separate policy that installs my driver pkg (hp essentials 5 7 5). The driver policy is set to run once per computer. Afterward, it uses lpadmin and script parameters to add the printer to the computer.

This works great for the most part. However, I've noticed some discrepancies in the printer features.

For instance, the HP printers are not able to view their Supply Levels under Options & Supplies. Instead, it says "Information Not Available".
Also, when I open the Printer Utility (HP Utility that is installed from driver package), no printers are shown automatically.

This feels problematic because when I add the same printer, manually through the GUI, it allows me to view Supply Levels and shows up in HP Utility just fine.

How could it be that the drivers are being partially applied if I haven't modified the package in any way?

[mscottblake]

@crehorewp Are you adding them to a print server with the script or IPP to the printer directly? When you add the printer manually, are you doing the same thing (print server vs printer)?

In my experience, obtaining the supply information from the print server generally fails, but works when you connect to the printer directly.

[dstranathan]

I could be wrong, but I don't recall ever having a SMB or IPP print server echo consumables data down to the client (other than maybe an AirPrint server running on macOS)

[jhuls]

@crehorewp I will echo what the previous two said. I don't think you can get consumable data through a server...at least I've never been able to.

Thanks for posting a link to the that script. I have my own method of installing printers at the moment but I'm intrigued to see if I might prefer this. Going to look at it this afternoon.

[dontmakememac]

@mscottblake I've filled out my print server info in your script but I did comment out some of the naming variables. In the GUI, I'm going under the IP tab to add printer info and select my driver, which I'm assuming is directly. So probably not a great test.

@dstranathan Ok good to know. The main reason I'm investigating this is because I want to ensure I'm not missing other features from the drivers that may not be as noticeable. I was worried that they aren't being installed/applied fully. But with the feedback I'm receiving here, it seems this may not be the case.

@jhuls Good! I got in this morning and realized it's @mscottblake script!

[mscottblake]

@crehorewp I'm just glad you and others have found it helpful.

You can tell if the driver is being applied correctly when you view the printer. Next to the word Kind, it will show the official type of printer based on the driver chosen. If it says it's a generic printer, the driver is not being selected correctly.

I gave a talk about a lot of this stuff at the Penn State MacAdmins conference a few months ago. Here's a link to the video in case anyone else stumbles on this thread. That script is featured in it.

[uurazzle]

FYI:

TIL about the “HP Easy Admin” tool. If you’re a school, large org, or enterprise and are looking for the HP driver package for a printer v the home/single-use Easy Setup app, you can use Easy Admin to go get the pkg-based driver installer to be used at scale.

https://support.hp.com/us-en/document/c06164609

[jchurch]

nice find @uurazzle !!! that tool works perfectly!!!

[uurazzle]

@jchurch Actually, to give credit where credit is due, it wasn't my find, but was publicized by this tweet by "Mike Boylan" here:

Mike Boylan: “TIL about the “HP Easy Admin” tool. If you’re a school, large org, or enterprise and are looking for the HP driver package for a printer v the home/single-use Easy Setup app, you can use Easy Admin to go get the pkg-based driver installer to be used at scale.”

[marcushe]

JUST THOUGHT I'D CHIME IN

TO GET THE HP DRIVERS YOU WANT HERE IS THE ANSWER:

1) OPEN HP EASY START
2) VISIT PREFERENCES AND ENABLE LOGGING
3) FIND YOUR PRINTER IN HP EASY START THEN START DOWNLOADING THE DRIVER
4) CLICK "BACK"
5) VISIT HP EASY START PREFERENCES AND CLICK "HP EASY START.log" AND OPEN THE LOG FILE
6) THE DIRECT HTTP LINK TO THE DRIVER .PKG FILE WILL BE AT THE END OF THE LOG
7) COPY / PASTE THE LINK INTO SAFARI AND VOILA!!!!

[kcranford]

HP has an application called HP Easy Admin, https://support.hp.com/sg-en/document/c06164609, that allows you to download these packages and you don't have to guess which one is the correct one.

[tkennedy]

The issue that I see with even the HP Easy Admin is that it is still downloading relatively large (~300MB) driver packs, even if the only thing you need is a specific driver for a single model.

I'm trying to figure out exactly how to modify the package to only deploy what I need, similar to the approach @LukeMason took earlier

[jared_f]

Hello All,

First of all, thank you for all the information. I ended up going to HP Easy Admin route and get a PKG driver install for all the printers in our environment. We had success with doing so with Xerox, so I deployed these drivers to a few Macs, but it popped a Kernel Extension issue. Do I have to whitelist each individual driver? Does anybody have the kernel extension for HP?

Thanks,
Jared Flitt
John Carroll University ITS

[jared_f]

And I just accepted it and got this...

[blackholemac]

You should be able to whitelist by Team Identifier in a profile (assuming you meet the prerequisites for using a kernel extension whitelist profile). Here is a write up on how to find the Team ID for a given kernel extension.

https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2018/04/12/whitelisting-third-party-kernel-extensions-using-profiles/

On top of that, the compatibility warning you are getting tells me that your extension may not be properly notarized or may be a 32 bit kernel extension.

If it's notarization, here's an article from Apple:
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/security/notarizing_your_app_before_distribution

If it's the 32 bit vs 64 bit issue, then consult a system report in System Information app. Under extensions, it will list whether your given kernel extension is 32 bit vs 64 bit. Going forward in future versions of macOS, both could end up being a problem for you.

[jared_f]

Thank you @blackholemac for the great info!

[wilesd]

October 2019 update to the entire HP driver library:

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Installations/Essentials/hp-printer-essentials-S-5_14_6.pkg

[cbrewer]

It appears these October 2019 updates no longer support some of the older P series LaserJets (P2015, P2055, P3005). That's not super helpful HP.

[hcodfrie]

HP has an Easy Admin tool for OSX. With the Easy Admin tool you have direct access to the HP repository to download the driver.

All PPDs are available via the link below. This prevents you from having to install a whole package of drivers.

ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software12/HP_Quick_Start/osx/Applications/HP_Easy_Admin.app.zip

[medavies]

It's hard to believe but this HP Easy Admin thing works. Thank you so much for sharing the FTP link. Did you get this from HP? When I chatted with support they said there was NO other way to get drivers except HP Easy Start which is a horrible tool.

[apizz]

The problem I have with HP Easy Admin is that there's nothing the app does to try and tell you when once you've downloaded a driver installer for one model and you go to get a different model that the driver is the same. You have to look at the actual downloaded file name and deduce.

It also doesn't stop HP from removing models like @cbrewer mentions. We need a way to say "here are the models I care about" and have HP work out on their end what driver installer(s) we need to cover those.

[stevewood]

@aporlebeke

Not an ideal solution, but I use Suspicious Package to peek into the downloaded package to see which drivers are in there.

Also, you can tell by the file size in HP Easy Admin which one it is downloading for each model. The larger one, I think it's around 240 MB, is the S package and the smaller one, I think around 54 MB, is the SE package. Those are the only two packages I've had to download.

I wish they would get some of the older models, like the P3010 and such, so that I could stop using the gigantic Apple HP Driver package that takes 5 minutes or more to install.

[apizz]

Yeah I do that, too. +1 on the Apple HP driver package. I know Adobe has moved to a model where packages are built in the cloud with the options you want. Maybe HP could do the same so you only have to push the drivers you need to deploy?

[donmontalvo]

Gawd, HP's dev team need to be stripped naked and dragged over broken glass. #dotAppInstaller

Software and drivers for HP Color LaserJet Managed MFP E77822-E77830 series

[sdagley]

@donmontalvo Are you sure? Based on their installers they may enjoy that.

[JKingsnorth]

Is there anyway to install drivers using the HP Easy Admin WITHOUT installing the "Essential Software" (HP Utility.app)?

I just want to install a driver. I don't want more software on computers for people to be able to poke around with.

I really miss HP pkg files from Apple...