Why on Earth is Linux using CUPS for printing???

I don't know when and why the enlightened ivory tower dwellers, who package Linux distros, decided to use CUPS across the board, but the end result is that every time a Linux system is booted prior to turning a printer on, which is in like 99% cases, CUPS in its wisdom pauses the printer considering the situation some kind of disaster.

So I have to explain to 1057th user how to go into CUPS web interface and use Administration tab to resume the printer.

If you ever had this problem, you probably know that there are suggestions on the internet to change error policy in CUPS config file /etc/cups/cups.conf from 'Pause Printer' to 'Retry Job'. Well, that does not work! The next time you reboot, the setting will revert back to 'Pause Printer'. Who and why overwrites your changes is a mystery, but someone went out of their way to ensure that you cannot print.

And you know what is most hilarious? It is that while your policy is still 'Retry Job', it does not actually do that. If you had a misfortune of sending a job to a turned off printer, the job will be permanently paused and you will have to do what? Right, go into CUPS administrative web interface, again, and resume that job. CUPS is hell bent on NOT printing.

You probably also came across the scripts that supposedly re-enable any paused printer by querying 'lpstat' and using 'cupsenable' command. Well, those do not work too! They simply print an error

cupsenable: Operation failed: client-error-not-found

I guess that's how Steve Jobs is laughing at all of us from the grave.

Posted by: LinuxLies at 06:17 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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