[cups.general] queues stop themselves

[Bernd Schubert]

Klaus Singvogel wrote:

> Bernd Schubert wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> we have several network printers connected to a cups server. Somehow our
>> group members manage to print in the evening and then forget about their
>> printjobs. So they also forget to fill in new paper into the printer.
>> Every this happens all queues with waiting jobs will be stopped the next
>> day.
>> 
>> Well, as far as I know I could go ahead and write additional cron jobs to
>> automatically re-enable those queues (e.g. by directly setting the state
>> in /etc/cups/printers.conf), but somehow I think the hole idea of
>> self-stopping printer queues is braindead!
>> 
>> So, is there an option to completly disable this bug/feature?
> 
> No, I don't know of any such option.
> 
> But in general, I doubt that this is a good idea. Think... what
> happens, if the CUPS server is still sending jobs to such a
> problematic printer? In many cases the print job gets lost and this
> is no choice for a large company, e.g. getting lose of your bank
> account statements or your payroll isn't fun. :)

But there are  no lost jobs, the printers just don't accept new print jobs
until new paper is filled in. I don't know anything about the IPP protocol,
but I guess there will be something that will tell the cups server, that
printing the job has finished or at least accepted by the printer. There's
absolutely no need to stop a queue. Also, filling the queues is still
possible, cups just doesn't try to send something to the printer. I don't
see a reason why it should stop to try sending the job to the printer.

> I think speaking and training your group members on unnecessary print
> jobs, would be more helpful than dropping print jobs after a while.

I'm not talking about unnecessary print jobs, thats another topic. Those
group members usually just print large articles, which takes some time. In
the mean time they deal with other things, concentrate on those and forget
about the print job. (Thats something that easily also may happen to me).
The next morning other group members come, fill in new paper, the old jobs
continuous and finishes, but new jobs are not send to the printers, just
since cups did decide to stop the queue. This is just silly!
When cups has such (undocumented?) features I really would expect that there
should be at least a timeout for it.

Cheers,
 Bernd