How to keep cups printing working?

joe at actionline.com joe at actionline.com
Wed Mar 7 19:09:22 MST 2012


Cups printing had been working fine on my system for a long time,
but then recently it has begun to quit working correctly and I can't
figure out why. I can get it restarted sometimes, but then it will just
quit working again and I have to go through a bunch of steps to get it
restarted.

In the Control Center >> System >> Manage system services by enabling etc.
it shows cups running. Then I go to Hardware > Configure printing and
scanning > Set up printers, etc. Sometimes it shows the printer has
vanished and I have to reset it again. Other times it is there. When I do
'lpstat' it shows a document waiting to be printed, but it does not print.

How can I get this reset so it will not continually quit printing and have
to get restarted again? If 'lpstat' shows a document waiting to be printed
and it shows the printer to be enabled, but "idle" ... what command could I
use to get the printer to restart and print the waiting document?

$ lpstat -t ... shows the following:
scheduler is running
system default destination: HPLaserJet4
device for HPLaserJet4: ///dev/null
device for HPPSC1200: ipp://192.168.0.73:631/printers/HPPSC1200
HPLaserJet4 accepting requests since Fri 02 Mar 2012 05:20:37 PM MST
HPPSC1200 accepting requests since Fri 02 Mar 2012 06:12:43 PM MST
printer HPLaserJet4 is idle.  enabled since Fri 02 Mar 2012 05:20:37 PM MST
printer HPPSC1200 is idle.  enabled since Fri 02 Mar 2012 06:12:43 PM MST
HPLaserJet4-47          joe              66560   Fri 02 Mar 2012 08:44:02
PM MST

As root, I tried this: service cups restart ... and got this result:
Stopping CUPS printing system:                             [  OK  ]
Starting CUPS printing system:                             [  OK  ]
Re-enabling disabled print queues:

In the lpstat -t results, two printers appear, one of which was disconnected
from the system some time ago, but it still appears and I cannot find a way
to get it deleted.  I tried entering this in the web browser:
http://localhost:631 and the CUPS management page appears. I click on
Printers and selected HPPSC1200 and tried to delete that printer, but I
got this response: "403 Forbidden" as shown in this screen capture:

http://www.upquick.com/temp/cups.jpg

How can I get that non-existent printer removed from CUPS?





More information about the PLUG-discuss mailing list