[GLLUG] Getting CUPS to auto-resume

[James Courtier-Dutton]

On 19 December 2013 15:35, John Winters <john at sinodun.org.uk> wrote:
> 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).
>

I have never seen this behaviour.
With my printer connected to a Linux machine via CUPS does the following:
1) Printer indicates that it has run out of paper.
2) Add new paper.
3) Printer just continues on. No interaction with CUPS needed.