Top Troubleshooting Tips

Though they are often easy to resolve, printer problems cause a lot of headaches. People generally need their print jobs NOW, and frustration can be high if the system isn't working properly. In this section, we share some of the most common printing problems and solutions.

Printing Clients Expect LPD and Not CUPS

If you have a legacy print client that cannot use IPP, but needs LPD to print documents or get printer status, you can start the cups-lpd service. To turn on cups-lpd, type the following from the command line as root:

   # chkconfig cups-lpd on

Printer Breaks Down with Jobs in the Queue

If your printer stops working but it still has print jobs, you can move these jobs to another printer. To move a particular print job to a new printer, use the lpmove command. Here's an example:

   # lpmove 703 printer1

This moves the print job number 703 to the printer1 print queue. If printer1 is ready to print, the print job will immediately begin printing on it. Repeat this for each print job you want to move.

One Guy is Hogging the Printer

You can limit the amount of printing that one person can do for a set period of time, so that no one person can dominate the printer. Here is an example of how to set job limits:

# lpadmin -p p1 -o job-quota-period=86400 -o job-page-limit=50

Here the job-quota-period is set to 86,400 seconds (or 1 day) and the number of pages a person is allowed to print on that day is 50. You can also limit the number of kilobytes of data that can be printed in the selected time period using the job-k-limit option.

Nobody Can Print Outside the Local LAN

Polling doesn't work well across multiple subnetworks. You can explicitly configure CUPS to relay the broadcast of printer information outside the local LAN using the BrowseRelay directive. With your users on subnet1 and print server on subnet2, here is how you could configure a computer with interfaces on both subnetworks to relay to share broadcast printer information between the two subnets. Assuming that the computer wants to relay broadcast data from the CUPS printers from subnet 10.0.1 to 10.0.2, you could add the following lines to the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf on the computer on subnet1:

   BrowseRelay 10.0.1 10.0.2.255