[GLLUG] Getting CUPS to auto-resume

[John Winters]

I have a long distance computer support problem.

My father is of an age that thinks it's wasteful to put more paper in 
the printer than you're going to use for that particular print job. Each 
time he wants to print something he will fetch a sheet of paper from the 
packet, load it in his printer, and then print.  I have tried persuading 
him simply to fill the paper tray on the printer, but he won't.

This leads to a recurring problem, in that often his print jobs need one 
more page of paper than he has allowed for, at which point the printer 
signals out-of-paper to the computer, and CUPS then pauses the printer.

Getting it to resume requires him to interact with a web page (which is 
permanently set up as a tab in his web browser) but it confuses him 
every single time.

It's always seemed to me to be a bit of a mis-feature in CUPS that it 
takes a printer off-line just because it's out of paper.  It probably 
makes sense in a data-processing-centre environment, where dedicated 
operators install fresh boxes of stripy fan-fold, but it makes no sense 
at all in the personal computer environment.

I've tried to find a way of telling CUPS not to do it, but without 
success.  Does anyone know of a magic setting which would switch off 
this irritating behaviour (in CUPS at least - not my father).

Thanks in advance,
John