[cups.general] Print job status not working as expected

[Palmer, Kurt]

Thanks Johannes,
                I will review the docs to see if anything can be done to CUPS to allow it to behave in a similar way to what we see a windows print server doing (regarding printer status reporting).

-Kurt

-----Original Message-----
From: cups-bounces at easysw.com [mailto:cups-bounces at easysw.com] On Behalf Of Johannes Meixner
Sent: Thursday, March 06, 2008 4:22 AM
To: Mirror of cups.general Newsgroup
Subject: Re: [cups.general] Print job status not working as expected


Hello,

On Mar 5 16:37 Kurt Palmer wrote (shortened):
> I am using CUPS 1.3.5 with HPLIP 2.8.2 in an attempt to setup print services
> for a HP9040.
> I am having a problem using the hp backend driver for CUPS. It seems that
> while standard printing works with the hp backend a paper jam (and other
> printer related errors) does not create a failure condition in cups and CUPS
> reports that the printjob is completed successfully.

Check /var/log/cups/error_log with "LogLevel debug" in
/etc/cups/cupsd.conf (restart cupsd after changes in cupsd.conf)
which exit state the hp backend returns.

See "man backend" which exit codes are currently supported
by the cupsd and see "ErrorPolicy" in
http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/ref-printers-conf.html


Furthermore I think HP did not yet answer all your questions in
https://answers.launchpad.net/hplip/+question/25886
(in particular your questions 2 and 3).


By the way:

As far as I understand the CUPS back-channel it is meant
to let the backend communicate with the driver (i.e. let the
piece of software which talks to the printer communicate
with the piece of software which produces the printing data).

For example to cancel an actively printing job, it is necessary
that the backend can tell the driver to stop printing in a
clean way - e.g. when the printer is in a special graphics
printing mode it must be somehow reset to its normal mode
so that a subsequent print job can start printing correctly.

In contrast when there is e.g. "out of paper", the backend
should not exit at all but wait and send an "out of paper"
message via stderr to have the user informed.

But you cannot rely on that the backend can detect an
"out of paper" in any case. For example when it is
a big-and-fat printer, all printing data of a job may be
already in the printer's memory and then the backend has
finished (because it could send the data completely to the
device without errors) and when "out of paper" happens later,
there is nothing which watches the printer.

An optional setting for the backend would be needed to let
the backend watch the printer until the job is finally
actually printed (which is needed e.g. for reliably accounting)
but this causes less throughput in particular for big-and-fat
printers because a subsequent job would not be started to be sent
to the device until the previous job was finally printed, see
for example the "waitjob" and "waitprinter" IPP URI options at
http://www.cups.org/documentation.php/network.html


Kind Regards
Johannes Meixner
--
SUSE LINUX Products GmbH, Maxfeldstrasse 5, 90409 Nuernberg, Germany
AG Nuernberg, HRB 16746, GF: Markus Rex

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