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

[Martin Schwarzkopf]

Thanks Helge,
All of them are parallel printers. The configuration
I have both, server and client, sides is very simple.
Please tell me if you need to know anything else.

Regards and thanks in advance,

Martin.

/etc/cups/printers.conf (server side - extract):

<Printer sales1>
Info Epson FX-890
Location Rose Kellner (rkellner - IPP)
DeviceURI ipp://rkellner.neukont.com/printers/lp
State Idle
Accepting Yes
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</Printer>


/etc/cups/printers.conf (client side):

<DefaultPrinter sales1>
Info EPSON FX-890 (filtered)
Location Rose Kellner (rkellner)
DeviceURI parallel:/dev/lp0
State Idle
Accepting Yes
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</Printer>

<Printer lp>
Info EPSON FX-890 (raw)
Location Rose Kellner (rkellner)
DeviceURI parallel:/dev/lp0
State Idle
Accepting Yes
JobSheets none none
QuotaPeriod 0
PageLimit 0
KLimit 0
</Printer>

Helge Blischke wrote:
> 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