Cups dying

[Sorin Srbu]

Hi all,

Running RHEL4u3 unupdated (due to software/instrument restrictions) on three
identically setup computers that most of the time runs fine and w/o any
hitches. Only printing dies once a week or so on two of the machines.

I stopped the cups daemon on the two failing machines and copied the contents
from the wotking /etc/cups to the two npn-working machines and started the
cups daemon again and waited an hour or so till the spooled docs were printed
out. In other words printing worked on the two failed machines.

Now a week later, printing stopped working again. This is the fourth or fifth
time in a month this has happened. I don't see anything strange in
/var/spool/messages (unless I'm looking in the wrong place...).

There are several printers installed on each computer and all printers are HP
Laserjet of one kind or another and of the networked kind.

Since these machines run instruments and are "certified" for a specific
instrument controller-software version (vnmrj from Varian if it's meaningful
to anybody), I can't readily update the OS or anything, hoping to fix the
problem. I'm thinking maybe I could update the cups only? This shouldn't be a
problem for the controller software, or so I hope...

Would anybody have any idea what might be wrong, or point me in a direction to
start looking for the problem at least?

TIA.

-- 
  
BW,

Sorin

# Sorin Srbu                    
# [Systems Engineer, Sysadmin]  	Web: http://www.orgfarm.uu.se
# Dept of Medicinal Chemistry,	Phone: +46 (0)18-4714482 >3 signals> GSM
# Div of Org Pharm Chem,		Mobile: +46 (0)701-718023
# Box 574, Uppsala University, 	Fax: +46 (0)18-4714482
# SE-751 23 Uppsala, Sweden	Visit: BMC, Husargatan 3, D5:512b
#
# ()  ASCII ribbon campaign - Against html E-mail 
# /\
#
# Harmless tagline follows:
#
# MS-DOS is no Operating System. It is a kernel loader for Duke Nukem 3D.