[K12OSN] CUPS stopping after printing one job

[Terrell Prude' Jr.]

Ronnie Miller wrote:
> I'm having an issue with cups printing in my k12ltsp labs. Both are
> running Centos 5 with all updates applied. My problem is that when a class
> is printing to the lab printer, the first job or two prints and the rest
> never get printed. It's as if the print service hangs up on the second or
> third job.
>
> Usually, I have to clear previous jobs using http://localhost:631 and the
> CUPS admin screens to get the printer working for them to print in the
> first place. Both are set up as IP printers. Is there something simple I'm
> missing?
>
> Any help is always appreciated.
>   

My Dad ran into a similar issue just today.  Here's how I fixed it for him.

I did an "lpq -P MyCaseSensitivePrinterName" at a terminal window.  I 
saw a bunch of jobs, preceded by this message:

   printer is not ready


If you see that, then take a look at the /etc/cups/printers.conf and 
look for the following:

 
    State Stopped
    StateMessage /usr/lib/cups/backend/lpd failed


What you do to fix this is as follows.

Edit /etc/cups/printers.conf, delete both of those lines, and replace 
them with this:

    State idle

and restart the CUPS daemon (as root) with "/sbin/service cups 
restart".  That ought to get your jobs printing again.

But this could happen again and again, you say!  Will I have to do this 
every time??  The answer is no, you won't.  What's happening here is 
that, for whatever reason, CUPS is timing out in talking to the printer 
and thus administratively downs the printer.  What it *should* do, 
ideally, is simply try again (maybe the printer cable got kicked, or it 
was powered off, or whatever).  And we can, indeed, make that happen!

Again, in /etc/cups/printers.conf, replace the following line

    ErrorPolicy stop-printer

with this

    ErrorPolicy retry-job

and things should be just peachy from here out.  Remember to restart the 
CUPS daemon after this change as well so that it takes effect.

--TP