From Fedora Project Wiki
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) 09:00 -- 17:00 UTC
  • Development - Jiri Popelka (IRC: jpopelka) 10:00 -- 18:00 UTC
  • Quality Assurance - Yulia Kopkova (IRC: ykopkova) 10:00 -- 18:00 UTC

Prerequisite for Test Day

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

How to test?

Update your machine

If you're running Fedora 13, make sure you have all the current updates for it installed, using the update manager. If you want to try Rawhide, see the instructions on the Rawhide page on the various ways in which you can install or update to Rawhide. Or:

Live image

Optionally, you may download a non-destructive Rawhide live image for your architecture. Tips on using a live image are available at FedoraLiveCD. Live images can be found here.

Testing automated driver installation

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.

Printing testing

Here are some things to look at:

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 (or ask on IRC)

Automated driver installation

User Smolt Profile / Printer Model Printer Connected References
User:FasUser HP DeskJet 990C FAIL [1]
  1. ↑ See RHBZ #12345
User Smolt Profile / Printer Model Printer Connected References

Printing testing

Please try any of the test cases you feel able to, and mark the boxes with the word PASS if everything worked perfectly or FAIL if you had problems. If you can't carry out a particular test (e.g. connect/reconnect a network printer), mark the box with N/A.

It would be useful to have extra information about what worked or what didn't -- see the example row for how to add references.

User Smolt Profile / Printer Model Local Printer Reconnect Network Printer Printing Problems References
User:FasUser HP DeskJet 990C PASS PASS N/A FAIL [1] PASS
  1. ↑ See RHBZ #12345
User Smolt Profile / Printer Model Local Printer Reconnect Network Printer Complex Problems References

Device IDs

To report missing or incorrect Device IDs found by using the check-device-ids script, please use the table below.

User Smolt Profile / Printer Model Device ID Expected driver References
User:FasUser Hewson Zippatron 40XC MFG:Hewson;MDL:Zippatron; gutenprint [1]
  1. ↑ See RHBZ #12345
User Smolt Profile / Printer Model Device ID Expected driver References
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