Installing HP Printer in Ubuntu

There is an easy way to install a HP printer in any Linux installation including Ubuntu. Thanks
to HP for providing an installer that does all the job on its own.

My printer is an HP Deskjet D2360. First goto the site -

http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/install_wizard/index.html

Then select Distribution, Version, Printer type and Model

Proceed to download the installer and move it into a folder. ( A separate folder)

The downloaded file will be something like hp[version].run. Start a terminal window and
access this folder then run the installer by typing

$sh hp[version].run

If you don't put the installer in a separate folder the default directory will be flooded with
installation files.

The installer itself will recommend you to run the installation as default user. Provide the
administrator/root user password when you are asked to.

Select automatic installation(Recommended by default). Proceed to answer some simple
questions and the installer will automatically download and install any dependancies if
required.

Then it will ask you to replug the printer and the installation is done. You can print a test page
if needed.

The HP download page also contains detailed instructions to run the installer.

CUPS Server not running

To install a printer in ubuntu, the installer program demanded that the CUPS - Common Unix Printing System had to be be operational. But my system showed that CUPS was not active.

Then I verified System>Administration>Boot-up Manager and I couldn't restart CUPS

Typying cupsd at the terminal to evoke the daemon, I got the message -

"Child exited with status 1!"

A bit of googling told me to check /var/log/cups/error_log and it gave -

"/etc/cups/ssl/server.crt" is a bad symlink - No such file or directory

I found the solution later on as -

sudo apt-get install --reistall ssl-cert

It worked and CUPS was running again.