How to test cups printer system

[Dave Feustel]

On Fri, Nov 21, 2008 at 01:26:25PM +0000, Tim Waugh wrote:
> On Fri, 2008-11-21 at 08:00 -0500, Dave Feustel wrote:
> > There are quite a few reports of the "not connected" problem found by
> > Google for a variety of operating systems using CUPS..  Is there a
> > simple way to test the printer directly (eg bypassing the entire CUPS /
> > LPD system )?
> 
> Not usefully.  The problem is that the CUPS backend has not been able to
> "connect" to the device, whatever that means for the particular backend
> type.  In IPP terms, the "connecting-to-device" state is still present
> for the printer object, and has been for a while (60 seconds).
> 
> What this really means can depend on which backend is being used.  For
> usb://... URIs it means that the USB device node couldn't be opened; for
> hp://... URIs it means that HPLIP wasn't able to find/connect to the
> device.  For network-type URIs (other than ipp) it might be a network
> level problem, etc.
> 
> I'd really like to get the printing troubleshooter working in this
> instance, as it performs different diagnostic checks depending on the
> backend in use.
> 
> Tim.
> */

The troubleshooting function seems to always stop responding as soon
as the printer is selected and the 'foreward' button is selected.

There is a way (which I have forgotten) to send data directly to the
printer port. I would like to try that just to verify that the printer
port itself is working.