CUPS printer "is not ready" -- how to make it ready?

[Helge Blischke]

I think you should describe in more detail how your matrix
are connected and handled by CUPS.

Helge


Martin Schwarzkopf wrote:
> 
> Perhaps this is a little long to explain but I need
> to do it this way so you can have a complete idea of
> my problem.
> 
> I am in charge of a 25 PC network at the place I work,
> 23 PCs have Linux installed as Operating System and
> 2 of them have Windows XP.  The server is also a Linux
> box running an application made in Cobol. All the
> Linux boxes have SuSE Linux 9.1.
> 
> We have around a dozen matrix printers (Epson FX-890)
> connected to some linux stations and a laser printer
> (HP LaserJet 1300) connected to one of the windows PCs.
> 
> All the PCs connect to the Linux server through a ssh
> session.
> 
> At the Linux Server, all the printers (Linux and Windows)
> are declared as remote raw printers so that the users
> can print from the Cobol application.
> 
> This server application sends pure text to the remote
> printers. At the server, the remote queues are declared
> as with CUPS at the Linux PCs and with SMB at the
> windows one.
> 
> Each Linux workstation printer has 2 queues defined.
> One raw queue called "lp" to receive the jobs sent
> by the server and one filtered queue for the local
> printing (usually jobs from OpenOffice). This queue
> is usually named according to the labour of the user
> (sales5, credit2, control1, etc)
> 
> The laser printer connected to the Windows PC works
> fine. ALWAYS. The matrix printers work only perfectly
> when the user sends a local print job (OpenOffice,
> Mozilla, Gimp, etc). The problem is that when the
> server sends a raw print job to the remote queues,
> frecuently, the printer status turns to "Printer is
> not ready" without any reason. This happens more or
> less after 3 or 4 print jobs sent to same remote
> queue.
> 
> Sometimes the queue looks empty, and some others don't.
> The strange thing is that the user gets a complete and
> normally printed job, but when the printer turns to the
> "Printer is not ready" state, even when the report seems
> to be finished, sometimes it still appears in the queue.
> 
> The only way I found to solve this, was creating a
> script to modify the /etc/cups/printers.conf file
> to turn it to "Printer IS ready" and to restart the
> daemon. (CUPS 1.1). This script checks the queue
> every minute.
> 
> It doesnt matter if the jobs was still appearing in
> the queue, if the printer turned to the "is not ready"
> state, it will be printed again when I restart the
> daemon!!!  So, if the user is printing numbered
> invoices or in a different kind of paper, they waste
> resources ans time.
> 
> If the report is quite long (3 or more minutes), the
> printer queue will turn again into the "not ready"
> state before it finishes and the cron daemon will
> restart the cups daemon and I that user will have
> 3 or more copies of the same report.
> 
> Can anybody lend me a hand?  We were working with
> SuSE 8.0 before and this didn't happen. I have this
> problem since the upgrade to 9.1
> 
> I think that the "Job Persistence" feature of cups is, in
> part, cause of my problem. Do you know how to disable it?
> I will appreciate any help anyone can give to me.
> 
> Thanks a lot in advance,
> 
> Martin Schwarzkopf
> mschwarzkopf at terra.com

-- 
Helge Blischke
Softwareentwicklung
SRZ Berlin | Firmengruppe besscom
http://www.srz.de
tel: +49 30 75301-360