[cups.development] [RFE] STR #1764: Make handling of backend errors more configurable

[Till Kamppeter]

[STR New]

On the cups.general mailing list/newsgroup was some discussion whether with
CUPS 1.2.x the wrapper backend "beh" (Backend Error Handler,
http://www.linuxprinting.org/beh.html) still makes sense. See the thread

Is http://www.linuxprinting.org/beh.html still useful with cups 1.2.X?

in the archives on

http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php

Go to

http://www.cups.org/newsgroups.php?gcups.general

and enter

http://www.linuxprinting.org/beh.html

as search term to see the whole thread.

beh was developed in CUPS 1.1.x times, where an error condition in a
backend (for example printer out of paper) disabled the queue and required
someone with root privileges (or in admin group depending on CUPS config)
had to re-enable it. beh has made this behaviour configurable, so that one
could also repeat or discard a failed job and keeping the queue enabled.

Now CUPS 1.2.x offers configurability of the handling of backend errors,
too, but with less possible settings than beh.

My suggestion is to add the following features in future versions of CUPS:

 - Make nfinite retries possible
 - give also possibility to disable the queue after the given retries 
   are done without success
 - Retry interval and number of retries configurable per printer
 - All this configurable in the web interface

Link: http://www.cups.org/str.php?L1764
Version: 1.3-feature