Bugzilla – Bug 119405
Printer stops responding, no way to get it back
Last modified: 2006-05-10 11:02:50 UTC
This is my #1 support call, from ... 9.0, 9.1, 9.3, and also not fixed in 10.0 Power goes out on printer, somebody unplugs the print cable during printing, printer prints wrong data, user panics and switches it off. Printer becomes disabled, and a regular user, who can start print jobs, can not enable it in any way. Switch the printer off and on, clear all print jobs, restart computer, no help. Printer is disabled forever. There are several problems here: 1) There is no way in YAST (or otherwise) to enable back the printer, once the problem has been resolved. The only way I know of is to remove the printer and reconfigure it. 2) Regular users should not need root password just so they could clear a paper jam. And you do not want to administer an OS where they call you to resolve the paper jam. 3) I had to make a special page which describes how to solve this problem http://www.arahne.si/setup5.html It is awkward, too many steps, an ugly workaround. There should be a better way. 4) Occasionally, after deleting/reinstalling the printer for many times, YAST will f### up the file cupsd.conf in such a way, that cups demon will die on startup (due to some error in cupsd.conf) and you will no longer be able to reconfigure any printers at all (at least form YAST). The only way out of this hell is to get a working cupsd.conf file from an other computer and copying it to /etc/cups
Our Bugzilla is no support forum. Neverteless some explanation: The CUPS authors are full aware of this problem and it is discussed in detail on the CUPS mailing lists. It is not possible to automatically re-enable a disabled queue, because it is not possible to automatically detect the reason why it was disabled. There are reasons when it must stay disabled (for details see the CUPS mailing lists) and therefore the only safe way is to let only the admin re-enable it. The next major CUPS version (1.2.x) adds error policies, such that you can tell CUPS to retry on error, or cancel the job, or stop the queue, etc. http://www.arahne.si/setup5.html is wrong. Before you make wrong descriptions public available, please read the documentation, for example the printed manual or http://portal.suse.com/sdb/en/2004/05/jsmeix_print-cups-in-a-nutshell.html "The Backends" to undersatnd why it happens and how to re-enable the queue. Finally: Do you think it is a good idea to get free support from us when you use impolite words even if you try to mask them with '#'?
Created attachment 51175 [details] Broken cupsd.conf The file was written by YAST printer cofiguration. It causes cupsd to crash, and since cupsd is not running, YAST can no longer configure printers.
Thank you for your clarifications. I will try to be positive on this. You say it is not a bug, but a feature. In my world, if customer needs root password to clear a paper jam, it is a bug. As a developer, I understand your view that it is caused by an arhitectural flaw of a component that you are using (CUPS). As a customer, not. If CUPS is made that way, then it is broken. The fact that it has always been like this, does not make it less broken. We need to be able to check ink level, do nozzle check, head cleaning... things that were normal on Windows since 95. But since you can't fix CUPS, what can you do? Currently, there is no way to enable a disabled printer from YAST. So just add a button to enable them. Or better still, as you enter in printer configuration, post a nice message: "There are disabled printers attached to your computer, do you want to enable them?" You know in YAST that a printer is local and disabled, so doing "/usr/bin/enable printer_name" is not so hard. In the mean time, we will fix our web page http://www.arahne.si/setup5.html with the command line solution, instead of deleting and reconfiguring the printer, since it is shorter. And I am not making it up, that printer re-comfiguration writes a broken cupsd.conf file; I attach one from an actual customer, on SUSE 9.3 with Stylus R200. Finally, some off topic remarks. I have bought every release of SUSE from February 1997 (4.4.1). Never ever has a customer asked me to install SUSE. They only use and buy SUSE because my software runs on it. I am not abusing bugzilla as support forum - I am trying to help you fix your OS so I will have less support to do. You should know who is your friend, never mind the harsh language.
Regarding broken cupsd.conf: Two concatenated cupsd.conf was a bug in the YaST module which actually writes into config files (the so called "INI-agent"), see bug #57297 (fixed in December 2004). If it really happens again with a new installed 10.0 then please read how to report a bug, for example see http://www.opensuse.org/Bug_Reporting_FAQ http://www.opensuse.org/Submit_a_bug In particular we need a description how to reproduce. Regarding re-enable queues with YaST: This is possible with YaST. Use the [Edit] button and then "State and Banner settings". Therefore it is still INVALID from my point of view. If you can show me how to reproduce the broken cupsd.conf in 10.0 then make a new bug report only for this problem (again read how to report a bug). If you cannot change the queue state in YaST for 10.0 then describe how to reproduce and make a new bug report only for this problem. Finally: The only "problem" I see is that it may be better to get state and banner stuff seperated and it may be a good idea to show the state on the summary screen. I filed an enhancement request regarding this.
CUPS 1.2 should solve the problem. http://www.cups.org/str.php?L1267