This question was also asked on Ask Ubuntu, which has some instructions to diagnose the problem.
For posterity, the recommendation from the only answer is:
I had a similar problem with an Epson network printer. To find out what was causing it, I used
netstat
to monitor the network connections while inserting a USB device:sudo netstat -t -u -a -p -c
One connection appeared a few moments after the device was inserted: a UDP connection by
colord-sane
. This binary is part ofcolord
, a "system service to manage device colour profiles".Unfortunately, disabling this service (at least on 15.04) is more difficult than it would seem.
colord
is not started directly by the init systemsystemd
. Instead,dbus
startscolord
, or is asked to startcolord
by some other service (at least not the printer servicecupsd
). One way to prevent this is by renaming the relevant service file:cd /usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/ sudo mv org.freedesktop.ColorManager.service org.freedesktop.ColorManager.service.disabled
I don't know what side-effects this action might have. Another possibility is to uninstall
colord
completely, usingsudo apt-get remove colord
As I don't really need colour profile functionality on my Ubuntu device, I didn't investigate what exactly
colord
does to "activate" the printer, or how to teach it not to do so.