Shouldn't run daemons when the relevant hardware is not present

(In reply to comment #0)
> If I don't have an HP printer why should my system have 2 daemons running doing
> nothing? Maybe some solution like the one that is used with samba where the user
> is asked to install the samba package when he/she tries to setup windows
> networking would work for this?

the samba setup is different, in that you don't need a server running.
Unfortunately there is no robust way to detect the printers and then run hplip
or not. The startup time is higher, but once the daemons are started, they
should be inactive and don't hurt.

As a workaround, the hplip 0.9.4-3ubuntu2 packages do have an option to disable
starting the two daemons, editing /etc/default/hplip

OK, for me it is an acceptable workaround. Anyway, loading the python runtime
during the boot process by default surely doesn't help to decrease boot time
which I think is/should be an ubuntu goal.

PS: FYI on the changelog for 0.9.4-3ubuntu2 you mention bug #20294 where you
should mention #14069.

(In reply to comment #2)
> PS: FYI on the changelog for 0.9.4-3ubuntu2 you mention bug #20294 where you
> should mention #14069.

yes, fooled by bugzilla goint to the next report ...

(In reply to comment #2)
> OK, for me it is an acceptable workaround. Anyway, loading the python runtime
> during the boot process by default surely doesn't help to decrease boot time
> which I think is/should be an ubuntu goal.

Starting X doesn't help to decrease boot time, but we accept the tradeoff there
too. ;-)

The python interpreter will be loaded later anyway (if it is not loaded already
at that time), so the performance impact is quite small

This is not fixed, only a workaround is provided. Reopening

It's in the scope of :
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/removing-unneeded-services

Well... I don't have a printer at all, so do I need Cups installed then?

Well, I've see this problem too, I've installed Ubuntu for my father on a very weak PC we had spare. Since there was no printer nearby it's totally wasting resources to have any of the printing related daemon or whatever running. Sure, I *can* disable them but not every user capable of doing these tasks ... And there're slower systems out there don't want to waste even a byte if possible ...

The default installation of Ubuntu is done in a way to make the most common hardware (for which there are drivers available upstream) work out of the box. By having the CUPS and HPLIP daemons installed and running it is easy to set up printers, especially the ones of HP.

Closing this as (at least in Feisty) we will leave the HPLIUP daemons in the standard installation.

Upgrading to upstream-version 2.7.6 will fix this. Quote from the hplip release-notes:

- No more Start-up daemons
- Replaced hpiod with the new HP Multi-Point Transport Driver (hpmud). Hpmud is a shared library instead of a daemon.

This is even better, as even for HP users, there is no more daemon, and what is needed is loaded on-demand.

and btw, also cups should run only when a printer is detected, or installed :-)