HP Print Server Uses Linux, But Doesn't Support It?

Spyky writes: "A fairly new product from HP, the Jet Direct 4000 Printing Appliance includes a 266 MHz PC processor, a 5.2 GB HD, 64 MB of RAM and runs the Linux operating system. However, it fails to recognize Linux, or any non-Microsoft operating system as a valid client. In essence HP recognizes Linux as an operating system powerful and stable enough to trust their Printing Server Appliance to, yet are unwilling to commit to supporting that very same operating system as a client."

Comments

Re:Questions

[Jeremy Allison - Sam]

Q) .What has the open source movement gained?

ans: nuffin.

Bzzzzt : WRONG ANSWER - thanks for playing.

I don't want to talk too much about this as I'm
sure HP have lots of marketing they want to do
around this.

But the deal is that *yes* this box uses Samba.
*YES* - HP have donated a *lot* of time, effort,
*CODE* (note that - it's important !) and money
in helping Samba support the new WinNT print
subsystem.

They have also helped us push the development on
authentigration and user enumeration between Samba
and WinNT, (check out the winbind project being
done on the Samba lists).

All of these goodies will appear in Samba 2.2.x,
due... well.... when it's *ready* (soon I hope) !

HP are *massively* contributing to Samba, and
the Open Source efforts. Just as much as other
vendors (SGI, Veritas) and other official Samba
supporters do !

Don't knock them just because their marketing
people sometimes are a bit clueless, and only
mention Windows in a product sheet.

They don't mention Samba either (I'm going to
be having a word with them about that.... :-).

Regards,

Jeremy Allison,
Samba Team.

And the problem with this is?

[Fervent]

Every day in corporations across America, someone installs a server OS they have no intention of installing on the client. Samba is becoming a viable alternative to NT: is anyone surprised the clients are still running Windows?

Personally, I see this as the right way of doing things. Linux is good as a server, and I like to play around with it on my machine (I program for class on it). But from my own tests, I would never install it on my family's machine.

Linux as server, not client

[Noer]

It seems that HP is far from alone in seeing Linux as a valid, cheap, better-performing alternative to Microsoft OS's on the server-side, but (like much of the industry) doesn't think Linux has any business as a client/workstation OS. I think that's a mistaken view, but it's a common one. Of course, what they're failing to see, is that even a server may (depending on purpose) need to print from time to time.

Re:Why would they

[Spudley]

linux lusers would whine and cry about it not being Open Source

Presumably, if it's using Linux, it is open source?
But more seriously, I've never known a linux user to skimp from buying hardware. Software maybe (why buy it when you can write your own version?), but hardware is not something you can download the source code for to get it for free.

Re:Corporate inconsistancy

[Tet]

This is not that big of a surprise. One division of the company appears to be pro-linux and another division appears to be anti-Linux or Microsoft-exclusive.

Indeed. I got a perfect example of this when HP technical support refused to tell me how to get the BIOS to recognise the suspend partition on my HP laptop. I said "Does it have to be in a specific location? Does it have to have a particular partition type? Does it have to be formatted in any particular way?". They said "Use the utility we provide under Windows". I pointed out that I didn't run Windows, and thus couldn't run the utility (which I didn't have anyway). They refused to give me the information I needed. I didn't want help on how to do anything, I just needed the info so I could do it myself. But apparently any non-MS usage isn't allowed, and they wouldn't tell me anything. The tech support guy quite happily told me that he ran Red Hat at home, but wasn't allowed to tell me anything because I wasn't running Windows...

Re:What exactly does this mean?

[TheReverand]

It supports all of the things you mention. When it says "supported clients" they mean you can call and say my win2k box doesn't work and they will help you fix it. You can't say "my Linux 2.1.2342 kernel won't recognize it" because they don't want to retrain their phone support. There is no "If OS = Linux then Do Not Print" conspiracy. Of course noone actually reads the links they are too busy whining that they can't have a $1300 print appliance in their living room.

hp will NOT release mgt (SNMP) info on printers!

[TheGratefulNet]

at a site I once had to manage (using SNMP), we wanted to monitor the hp printers. they did have the snmp agent running (you could 'walk' their box just fine) but you has no way to reverse translate their OIDs (variable names in dotted-numeric format) into symbolic names (sort of like disassembling assembler and trying to put human names on addresses and constants).

apparently its HP's policy NOT to release their MIB (the document that translates numbers to names). I find this pretty pathetic; as the norm these days (and for years, too) is to release your MIB so that other netmgt stations can compile it and manage your box intelligently.

what makes HP think that their vision is so special that they can't release their variable names?

sheesh.

so this latest move of theirs is not at all surprising to me. hp is NOT an "open" company; I never saw them that way; and they're not helping matters with this latest stunt.

--

Operator error.

[rew]

Hmm. I'd say "operator error". I just read the specs from HP, and indeed "Linux" is not listed as a client OS. However, I suspect that this is an omission in the specs than an indication that they don't really run "lpd" on the machine.

It's pretty clear. They took the cheapest hardware they could find, put Linux on it and are selling it. It would cost EFFORT to make it not work with Linux as a client OS, as that's standard. My bet is they just use lpd (Confirmed!), and it would cost effort to prevent it from working.... Hmm. Disproved here.

Roger.

Acronym arithmetic.

[slothbait]

Anyone else just realize that:

HP++ = IQ

in the same sense that

IBM-- = HAL.

or

VMS++ = WNT (Windows NT)

I'm surprised that I haven't seen this pointed out before.

--Lenny

FUD! (Read the specs!)

[AJWM]

Or perhaps not FUD, just stupidity.

HP networked laser printers routinely support anything that'll speak to lpd. My HP LaserJet 2100 TN certainly supports Linux (and every other *nix, and Mac, and Windows), and it looks like the 4000 does too.

(Okay, sure, it doesn't have a fancy graphic interface to control exotic printer options like it does for the Mac or Windows -- but show me where the API for such an interface is defined in Linux or any other 'nix. I know, it's in progress.)

Get a grip.

What exactly does this mean?

[drinkypoo]

Spyky writes: "A fairly new product from HP, the Jet Direct 4000 Printing Appliance includes a 266 MHz PC processor, a 5.2 GB HD, 64 MB of RAM and runs the Linux operating system. However, it fails to recognize Linux, or any non-Microsoft operating system as a valid client.

I can't believe that this was enough to warrant a story submission.

What do you mean, "Fails to recognize"? Give us some background here. It apparently takes jobs from SMB clients and prints them to the printer using LPR (which basically every networked laser printer supports these days, including all the HPs, Tektronix, and so on, as well as the older HP Jetdirect cards and servers.)

By 'fails to recognize' do you mean that HP WebJet Admin can't do a printer discovery on your network and discover LPR queues on your machines magically? Or do you mean that when you use smbclient to try to print something to the HP Print Server, it won't take your request? Or do you mean that you can't print to it via LPR, which isn't part of its design function in the first place?

HP is really missing the boat on this one, anyway. You should be able to print to it via lpr, appletalk, novell, or smb; It should support TCP/IP, IPX, and Appletalk DDP. All of this is provided with standard linux distributions now, and none of it is difficult to locate. As usual, HP misses the boat.

Even my favorite product that they make, the HP Procurve 4000M switches, is fairly lame in some respects; In order to increase the number of VLANs on the box, you must restart the switch. I bet Cisco's laughing about that one all day every day.