[CentOS] CUPS job handling

Sun Sep 1 12:19:58 UTC 2019
hw <hw at gc-24.de>

On Thu, 22 Aug 2019 11:48:37 -0500 (CDT)
Michael Hennebry <hennebry at web.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu> wrote:

> On Tue, 20 Aug 2019, hw wrote:
> 
> > is it somehow possible to make CUPS automatically redirect jobs, and
> > following jobs, away from printers which can not print them to other
> > printers that can print them until the printers that couldn't print
> > them are again able to print them?
> 
> IIRC CUPS has printer classes or some such thing.
> A user can send a job to a class and CUPS will
> direct it within that class as it sees fit.
> Presumaly if one printer is stil chewing on last week's job,
> CUPS will see fit to direct subsequent jobs elsewhere.

Well, yes, and I am not sure (at least not yet) if print jobs for a
class are diverted to other members of the class or not.  It seems
that data kept in the printer buffer and in the print-server the
printers are connected to can make it difficult to figure what is
actually going on.


A much bigger problem are printers that are not members of classes,
though.  Such printers are not members of classes because they are at
physically different locations, and employees would have to go to from
one printer to another to collect the lables.

Yet if a printer doesn't print anymore, it is desirable to divert jobs
to another printer, preferably a designated fallback.  It is of no use
when the jobs get stuck in the queue until the printer is being
maintained which can be days later.