Increase time limit for pausing upon "The printer may not exist or is unavailable at this time"

[cweiske]

I've got an IPP network printer, and when printing, we often forget to turn it on. After printing we notice that we have to turn it on, walk two rooms and switch it on. It boots and then is available.
In the meantime, cups decides to pause/stop the printer - and we have to manually unpause/resume/continue it.

Is there a way to increase the time until cups pauses the printer?

(The network printer documentation tells me there is a contimeout=seconds parameter, but it defaults to 1 week. So I don't think that this is the setting)

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The cups error log shows:

W [13/Sep/2026:11:11:48 +0200] [Job 38] The printer may not exist or is unavailable at this time.
...
W [13/Sep/2026:11:12:58 +0200] [Job 38] The printer may not exist or is unavailable at this time.
E [13/Sep/2026:11:12:59 +0200] [Job 38] The printer configuration is incorrect or the printer no longer exists.
W [13/Sep/2026:11:13:00 +0200] [Job 38] Backend http returned status 4 (stop printer)

So the timeout seems to be a bit above one minute.

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(The German log messages are:)

Der Drucker existiert nicht oder ist zurzeit nicht verfügbar.
Die Druckerkonfiguration ist nicht korrekt oder der Drucker existiert nicht mehr.

[michaelrsweet]

You can run:

lpadmin -p PRINTERNAME -o printer-error-policy=retry-current-job

to tell cupsd to retry indefinitely.

What version of CUPS are you using?

[cweiske]

I'm using cups 2.4.10-3+deb13u2 on Debian 13.
I'll modify all machines and see if that helps. (I'll configure it via cupsd.conf, ErrorPolicy retry-current-job)

Btw, is there a way to read the setting? lpoptions doesn't list it for the printer.
And is this configurable via the web UI?

[michaelrsweet]

There isn't (currently) a way to read this, although it looks like the lpstat sources have a placeholder that could be used to report it with the "lpstat -l -p" output.

The web interface shows the current value under the "Policies" tab of the printer options.

[cweiske]

The web interface click path is: Administration > Manage Printers > Click Printer name > Set default options > Policies > Error Policy

Thank you!

[cweiske]

• Just changing cupsd.conf is not enough; it only holds the default for new printers. The current printer needs to be changed as well.
• With retry-current-job, cups retried printing for at least 5 minutes when I stopped and removed the printing job. So it seems to work now.

Thank you, @michaelrsweet