Bug#743455: cups: Pause after backend failure (printer off) not reset by reboot
Control: tags -1 +moreinfo
Hi dear Jürgen Pfennig, and thanks for your bugreport,
Sorry for the delay in my answer: the tone of your whole message
hindered my willingness to answer it in shorter delays, sorry.
Le mercredi, 2 avril 2014 23.50:23, vous avez écrit :
> Assume a "ordinary" user, not an expert. He turned off the printer
> power [not on idiot - in some country electicity is expensive]. He
> sends a file to the printer, the printer backend fails [notably a hp
> printer, but others brands seem to be affected too].
First, there's no single part of the software they'd have used that is
claiming to such users that they are idiots; you seem to think such
behavior is purposely tailored to make such users feel like idiots. That
idea is just plain wrong and I think it is a useless offense against the
developers.
> Cups now adds some cryptic messages to it's log files [no "ordinary"
> user will ever read them] and silently pauses the printer. Even after
> having power restored the printer will not print again. Our
> "ordinary" user will reboot his computer [trained by advise from
> other OS] but he still cannot print.
That's a bug. No need to put users in little boxes separating "skilled
administrators" from "ordinary" users; this makes no sense.
> He will not open the cups web frontend to restart the printer
> [password required] nor will he "sudo cupsenable <printer-name>" [no
> priviledge anyhow].
> (…)
> (c) make linux developers understand "ordinary" users. Not everybody
> wants to be a linux geek.
Painting the developers as not willing to understand "ordinary" users is
uselessly offensive again.
The crux of the problem you're seeing is that CUPS will disable the
printer if the backend that manages it errors wrongly in the legitimate
cases where the user powers his printer off for example.
Now, to be able to usefully get this problem solved, I need various
things that I can't get from your initial mail, especially as I don't
experience this problem here.
Please follow https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingPrintingProblems; and
answer the following questions:
* What printer model (please be specific) are concerned?
* What driver or printing filters are used for it?
* What appears in the cups error_log when it is powered off, powered on
again and when someone tries to print to it?
* Anything else from the above wiki page.
Thanks in advance, cheers,
Didier Raboud, aka OdyX
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