Resuming job

[Helge Blischke]

Gilles Germon wrote:

>> Gilles Germon wrote:
>>
>> >> Gilles Germon wrote:
>> >>
>> >> > cups 1.3.9.17
>> >> > Every month, a customer has to print a very big job.
>> >> > Details here:
>> >> > https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/cups/+question/94758
>> >> >
>> >> > I thought this issue resolved, but the operator called me this
>> >> > morning and said: "when I have put new paper into the printer, it
>> >> > has prints a few pages (the printer buffer) and has restarted the
>> >> > print job from the beginning"
>> >> >
>> >> > To be short:
>> >> > * If  ErrorPolicy is set to stop-printer, cupsenable enable the
>> >> > printer but the current job is never requeued.
>> >> >
>> >> > * If  ErrorPolicy is set to retry-job the job restart from the
>> >> > beginning.
>> >> >
>> >> > What is the parameter to tell cups : wait until the printer is
>> >> > online and continue to print the job
>> >> >
>> >> > TIA
>> >> > Gilles
>> >>
>> >> Gilles,
>> >>
>> >> your proglem is probably that the printer closes the connection after
>> >> some timeout value (I know that from various HP printers driven via
>> >> JetDirect interfaces). As you use the lpd backend for your printer,
>> >> there is no chance to continue the print job after the connection has
>> >> been closed by the printer at the interruption point.
>> >>
>> >> As far as I can see, the only chance is - regardless of the backend
>> >> you use - to set an infinite idle timeout value on the printer itself,
>> >> if that is possible at all.
>> >>
>> >> Helge
>> >>
>> >> P.S.: If the printer offers a well implemented IPP interface, it could
>> >> be possible to qurey the printer for the successfully printed sheets
>> >> or pages and continue from that point at the job restart, but I'm not
>> >> sure if CUPS already supports a job resume like this.
>> >>
>> > Helge,
>> >
>> > Thank you for your attention.
>> > I am pretty sure that it is not a printer problem because it worked for
>> > years with the same printer and the same application. The only thing
>> > that has changed is the linux server, the old server was a 2.4 kernel
>> > with cups 1.1.19. This problem only appears after the new server with
>> > Ubuntu 9.04 and cups 1.3.9.17 have been in place. I seen in cupsd.conf
>> > of an old server KeepAlive and KeepAliveTimeout parameters are set. Do
>> > you think this may have something to do with this problem?
>> >
>> > Gilles
>>
>> Gilles,
>>
>> if the job-orginating host and the CUPS-server are different machines,
>> you could try to re-insert the keepalive statements. Though the CUPS
>> documentation tells that this feature is on by default in HTTP 1.1, it
>> might be that the Ubuntu folks decided to change the default ...
>>
>> Perhaps you could pst (an URL to) the complete chunk of your error_log
>> containing all the log lines of this job so that it is possible to
>> reconstruct the complete job's history?
>>
>> Helge
>>
>> P.S. I've looked into the sources of the LPD backend in both 1.1.19 and
>> 1.3.9 and couldn't find any serious differences with respect to timeout
>> handling. Especially there is no such message during writing of the data
>> file itself.
>>
>>
> Helge,
> 
> Yesterday evening I did launch an edition on the server.
> You could find the error_log file here :
> http://www.soubabere.fr/errorlogcups.txt (this is a huge file 2.8Mb) The
> job is 302062 and another job (302078) has been sent by a cron job at
> 23:00 All the night long, we can see every 5 minutes [Job 302078]
> recoverable: Unable to connect to printer; will retry in 30 seconds ...
> but nothing with the first job 302062 ??? I don't know why cups restart at
> 07:36 every morning, surely a cron job but I can't find it. When the
> operator puts paper in the printer, it prints the buffer, print the job
> 302078 and restart the job 302062 from the beginning.

Well, the main problem is the dayly CUPS restart at 07:36. This stops all 
jobs; the scheduler starts all not yet completed jobs from the beginning.
BTW, your system seems not to do a well behaved restart, as the messages
"Scheduler shutting down normally" and "Savinf job cache file ..." are 
missing in your error_log.

As I have no Ubuntu system available to look into, I do not know how the 
restart is scheduled - I suggest to look into the documentation regarding 
system administration or ask for more info in the various Ubuntu forums.

Helge