I'm having trouble printing to a "HP Color LaserJet Pro MFP M281fdw" using the new fancy IPP Everywhere support in CUPS. When I select to print a test page from the CUPS web GUI I get a garbage output printed with the following lines:

#PDF-BANNER
           Template default-testpage.pdf
                                        Show printer-name printer-info printer

The last line ends at the right edge of the A4 paper. The rest of the page is blank. Other files also print strangely. I tried to print a simple PDF with colour vector graphics and it ended up in greyscale instead of colour. Multi-page prints doesn't work at all (no page at all comes out, not even the first one). Double sided printing (this printer is capable of automatic duplex) obviously fails completely for that reason alone.

The printer in question works properly using the "Postscript" driver option, and prints the normal test page. Printing other things also works. The printer also works properly using the "driverless, cups-filters" option.

Thus the actual bug itself: Presumably the "IPP Everywhere" driver suggested should either work or at least not be suggested as the top driver for this particular printer.

Detailed testing

According to the web GUI of the printer it does support both IPP and AirPrint.

CUPS finds the printer several times, using different protocols presumably:

• HP Color LaserJet MFP M281fdw (81A44A) (HP ColorLaserJet MFP M278-M281)
  • Actual URI: dnssd://HP%20Color%20LaserJet%20MFP%20M281fdw%20(81A44A)._ipp._tcp.local/?uuid=<cut out in case it is personally identifiable>
• HP Color LaserJet MFP M281fdw (HP ColorLaserJet MFP M278-M281)
  • Actual URI: socket://192.168.2.12
• HP ColorLaserJet MFP M278-M281 (driverless) (HP ColorLaserJet MFP M278-M281)
  • Actual URI: ipps://HP%20Color%20LaserJet%20MFP%20M281fdw%20(81A44A)._ipps._tcp.local/

For all of these the following drivers are suggested at the top of the list (before the full list of HP printers follow alphabetically):

• HP ColorLaserJet MFP M278-M281 - IPP Everywhere ™
  • Produces garbage output
  • Almost all options missing (such as: duplex printing, page size, feed tray, ...)
• HP ColorLaserJet MFP M278-M281 Postscript (en, en, da, de, es, fi, fr, it, ja, ko, no, nl, pt, ru, sv, zh_CN, zh_TW)
  • Works, but gives warning about it being a legacy driver that will be unsupported in the future.
  • Has the most options
• HP ColorLaserJet MFP M278-M281, driverless, cups-filters 1.28.12 (en)
  • Works
  • Missing several options, such as edge control, print text as grey, etc.
• HP ColorLaserJet MFP M278-M281, Fax, driverless, cups-filters 1.28.12 (en)
  • Same as the above one.

I have not tested all combinations of URIs and suggested drivers, but I did test everything for both the socket:// and ipps:// URIs and saw no differences.

Software versions

• Arch Linux (rolling release)
• CUPS 2.4.1-1 (packaged by distro)
• avahi 0.8+22+gfd482a7-3 (packaged by distro)