Comment 19 for bug 35638

I have a similar problem with my Brother HL-1440 connected by USB port, on Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty). This is a recent and up-to-date clean installation of the official release download, not an update from prior release. At first, the printer was detected and printed a test page ok. After some use, I started having erratic behavior of the printer. Documents would queue but not print even though I didn't change anything relating to the printer and the printer was still on and ready. For no apparent reason, the printer started working again under Feisty, for a while. Then failed to print again. The "lpinfo -v" output shows that the usb printer is detected sometimes (as "direct usb://Brother/HL-1440%20series") and after repeated lpinfo executions, the printer mysteriously disappears from the lpinfo output. When the printer is detected by lpinfo, doing a printer properties dialog shows the printer as a detected local printer on USB #1 and a test page prints fine. When the printer is not detected on lpinfo, doing the printer properties shows it as a Network Printer of type IPP Printer on Cups server (IPP), with URI= "usb://Brother/HL-1440 series" and the print-test-page sends data to the print queue but it hangs with Test Page job status showing as "printing:job-printing" and printer status saying that the printer was not ready (but it was). To force the printer to be detected again, I can unplug and replug the USB cable to it. The lpinfo -v shows it again, for a while, but it comes and goes and sometimes comes back. I thought the printer's sleep mode might be causing the driver to drop out, so to speak, but the Ready LED on the printer doesn't seem correlated with the times when the lpinfo can't see the printer and when it can. Once when I unpllugged and repllugged the USB cable, while a job was hung up in the print queue (printer icon in system tray), the stopped print job started and the test page actually was sent to the printer and it printed. When I do lpinfo -v, the system monitor shows 100% CPU load. "top" shows about 99% of the time is in cupsd. This goes on for quite a few seconds (maybe 10 to 20) then lpinfo produces its output. Also, when installing a printer, the search through the printer database takes a very long time, whcih has been reported in other bugs. Once I showed the printer properties dialog and it said "Status: Printing: No %%BoundingBox: comment in header!" and the connection tab showed that the printer had been detected as a network printer but this time with URI= parallel:/dev/lp0. Also, I have noticed that sometimes the lpinfo output includes direct parallel, direct canon, and direct epson entries, but they sometimes disappear from repeated executions of lpinfo. This erratic behavior almost defies description. The same hardware operates perfectly when I boot into Windows XP.