Since the update of Ubuntu to 11.10, HPLIP could not be correctly installed anymore.

HP printers work with the standard CUPS printer drivers in Ubuntu Linux. But HPLIP (HP Linux Imaging and Printing) is needed to scan directly to the PC and send faxes out of Ubuntu with multifunction printers (MFP), HPLIP ist open source and communicates on behalf of  CUPS und the Linux Scan-Software SANE with the HP multifunction printers providing them all their possibilities.

Since the update to Ubuntu Oneiric Ocelot, HPLIP could not be installed correctly anymore. Be it the version 11.07 from the official Ubuntu software repository or the newer version 11.10 which can be downloaded  from the HPLIP website. Every attempt ended with the following error message:

error: hp-setup failed. 
 Please run hp-setup manually.

But also installing manually does not work either:

$ hp-setup

ImportError: libhpmud.so.0: 
 cannot open shared object file: 
 No such file or directory

Now I have finally found this workaround on Launchpad:

$ sudo echo '/usr/lib64/' >> /etc/ld.so.conf.d/lib64.conf
$ sudo ldconfig

After that the installation can be done without any errors.