Un ottimo programma da shell per visualizzare lo stato dell’inchiostro della nostra stampamte è ink come riportato sul sito:

ink – a command line tool to check the ink level of your local printer.

Ecco le varie opzioni del programma:

       -p usb|parport|bjnp
              Probe usb, parallel port or bnjp (Canon network printer).

       -n <portnumber>
              Number of the port to probe (/dev/usb/lpX or /dev/parportX).

       -d <usbdevicenode>
              Specify full path of your USB printer device node.

       -b <uri_or_ip_address>
              Specify URI or IP address of a Canon BNJP network printer.

       -v     Return ink and libinklevel version.

ecco i vari esempi:

       ink -p usb -n 2
              Query ink level of  printer  with  /dev/usb/lp2  or  /dev/usblp2
              device node.

       ink -d /dev/myusbprinter0
              Query  ink level of printer with /dev/myusbprinter0 device node.

       ink -b printer.my.domain
              Query Canon BNJP network printer on printer.my.domain

Fonte articolo:

http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/lucid/man1/ink.1.html