Test Day:2010-03-25 Printing

DATE	TIME	WHERE
Thu March 25, 2010	ALL DAY	#fedora-test-day (webirc)

What to test?

Today's instalment of Fedora Test Day will focus on printing, and specifically on Automatic Print Driver Installation.

If you come to this page after the test day is completed (or even before), your testing is still valuable and you can use the information on this page to test with your printer and provide feedback.

Who's available

The following cast of characters will be available testing, workarounds, bug fixes, and general discussion ...

• Development - Tim Waugh (IRC: twaugh)
• Quality Assurance - Yulia Kopkova

Prerequisite for Test Day

• A system with a network connection (for automatic driver installation)
• A printer
• Fedora 13 Alpha (or newer)

How to test?

Install Fedora 13 Alpha, or simply boot the Live CD. Start with the printer disconnected from the computer.

To test automatic printer driver installation, make sure to remove these packages first:

• foomatic
• foomatic-db-ppds
• hpijs
• gutenprint-cups

When the printer is connected you should be shown a prompt to install whichever packages are required for that model. After clicking "Install" the queue should be created and a notification will be shown about it.

Note that automatic printer driver installation currently only works in GNOME.

Test Cases

Here are some things to look at:

• Use a new printer for the first time
• Reconnect a printer you have used before
• Use a network printer
• Complicated printing tasks: duplex, n-up, special paper, ...
• Problems: paper jam, low ink, ...

Device ID checking

A printer has its own model-specific Device ID, and a printer driver has a list of Device IDs for printers it can drive. It is certainly the case that there are printer drivers with missing or incorrect Device IDs.

A script to help fix this is provided in the system-config-printer package and can be run like this:

python /usr/share/system-config-printer/check-device-ids.py

It will prompt you for your root password because CUPS requires administrative authentication in order to provide a list of attached devices.

You should get output like this:

Fetching driver list
└── HP DESKJET 990C: MFG:HEWLETT-PACKARD;MDL:DESKJET 990C;
    ├── drv:///hp/hpcups.drv/hp-deskjet_990c.ppd [/usr/share/cups/drv/hp/hpcups.drv]
    ├── foomatic:HP-DeskJet_990C-cdj550.ppd [/usr/lib/cups/driver/foomatic]
    ├── foomatic:HP-DeskJet_990C-chp2200.ppd [/usr/lib/cups/driver/foomatic]
    ├── foomatic:HP-DeskJet_990C-hpijs.ppd [/usr/lib/cups/driver/foomatic]
    ├── foomatic:HP-DeskJet_990C-pcl3.ppd [/usr/lib/cups/driver/foomatic]
    ├── gutenprint.5.2://hp-dj_990c/expert [/usr/lib/cups/driver/gutenprint.5.2]
    └── gutenprint.5.2://hp-dj_990c/simple [/usr/lib/cups/driver/gutenprint.5.2]

The "MFG:...;MDL:...;" part is the Device ID for this printer and the lines below it are the drivers which have been identified for it. The package or filename providing this driver is shown in [brackets] after it.

If the driver which should be used for this printer is not listed, please file a bug against that driver quoting the Device ID.

Test Results

Please report all bugs into Bugzilla against the appropriate component:

• For problems involving the printer status icon, the configuration tool, or automatically created queues, file bugs against system-config-printer
• For problems using the File->Print.. dialog, file bugs against the application or (if the GTK+ print dialog is being used) against gtk2
• For bugs in particular drivers, file bugs against them e.g. hplip, gutenprint, foomatic, cups
• If still unsure, file bugs against cups

Test Cases

User	Smolt Profile / Printer Model	Local Printer	Reconnect	Network Printer	Complex	Problems	References
User:FasUser	HP DeskJet 990C	PASS	PASS	N/A	FAIL	PASS
User	Smolt Profile / Printer Model	Local Printer	Reconnect	Network Printer	Complex	Problems	References

Device IDs

User	Smolt Profile / Printer Model	Device ID	Expected driver	References
User:FasUser	Hewson Zippatron 40XC	MFG:Hewson;MDL:Zippatron;	gutenprint
User	Smolt Profile / Printer Model	Device ID	Expected driver	References