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

[Helge Blischke]

I guess Johannes Meixner is right with his suspicion: probably 
a ^D to signal end of job is missing. Perhaps the line

*JCLEnd: "<04>"

in the PPD will cure the issue.

Helge


Martin Schwarzkopf wrote:
> 
> 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

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