Printer status: stopped. This is murder.

Silviu Marin-Caea silviu_marin-caea at stargame.ro
Tue Nov 27 02:45:53 PST 2007


> > This is a case where a small bad design decision destroys all the good that CUPS does.
> >
> > The situation couldn't be more ordinary: a USB printer (HP F4180).
> >
> > If this printer is turned off when the computer is on, it will enter the stopped/paused state and remain so forever.
> >
> > To the average user this means exactly: LINUX PRINTING DOES NOT WORK.  It's as simple and clear as that.
> >
> > To get it to print again, the user should give the cupsenable command or use the web interface.  Do you expect mom and pop to know about "cupsenable" and "http://localhost:631"?  Really.
> >
> > Guys, you brought linux printing forward from the middle ages.  Don't leave it in the 1980s, please, we need it in the present.
> >
> > Whatever might be the reason cups doesn't retry printing, is it worth sacrificing usability so brutally?
> >
> > openSUSE 10.3, cups-1.2.12
> >
> > Thank you
>
> I spent hours trying to resolve/workaround this issue before finding this post.
> Thanks Silviu.

The problem is solved with ErrorPolicy in /etc/cups/printers.conf.  openSUSE 10.3 has this by default as "stop-printer".  Changing that to "retry-job" is the solution.

CUPS people, I'm deeply sorry about the inflamed post.  I'm taking it to SUSE bugzilla. :-)





More information about the cups-devel mailing list