[CentOS] what causes CUPS to dis-enable a printer?

Wed Feb 10 15:32:02 UTC 2010
William Warren <hescominsoon at emmanuelcomputerconsulting.com>

On 2/10/2010 9:15 AM, Robert Heller wrote:
> At Tue, 9 Feb 2010 22:37:28 -0600 CentOS mailing list<centos at centos.org>  wrote:
>
>    
>> In our computer lab, there are 6 Centos 5.4 workstations. There is an
>> HP printer with jet direct card. It often works.
>>
>> But sometimes users come and get me saying the printer is broken, but
>> it is actually working fine for *most* of the workstations.
>>
>> On the troubled system, I run system-config-printer and I check the
>> printer in question (under properties)  and I see the printer has been
>> disabled. I mean, the box by the word Enabled is empty.
>>
>> After I manually (use lprm) remove the print jobs, and set the printer
>> to Enabled, then the print queue will start working again.
>>
>> I've checked the files in /var/log/cups and there's nothing evident.
>> error_log has nothing.
>>
>> We have had the problem during the year (that others have reported in
>> this list).  When trying to print some pdf files from Evince, the
>> symptom of the problem is that the pdf files don't print. They seem to
>> "clog" the printer.  When that happens, I have seen the Enabled box
>> come unchecked in the printer configurator.  However, the most recent
>> problems are not associated with the use of Evince.
>>      
> Unless you have a proper print filter for them (on the Linux system!),
> PDF files cannot be printed.
>
>    
>> I would really appreciate some tips about how to bugshoot this problem.
>>
>> pj
>>
>> ps. The Cups server is running on the system in question, lpq shows
>> lots of print jobs waiting.
>>      
> Wondering if the printer *by itself* can manage handling connections
> for a number of workstations and arbitrating jobs.  Maybe you need a
> Linux print server to manage the print queue and feed jobs to the
> printer one at a time.  It seems like some of the workstations are
> getting a refused connection and thinking the printer is 'dead' (and
> thus disabling it), when it is merely too busy to respond.  A proper
> linux print server would queue up the job and be ready for additional
> connections.
>
>    
>>
>>      
>    
I have to agree with Robert here.  Instead of running a separate server 
on each box run a central cups server on one machine and have it take 
care of everything.  I bet since all of the machines are their own 
servers they printer can't keep up and the individual machines are 
timing out...:)