45

OS: Ubuntu 13
Printer: HP Deskjet 2540

Problem: Printer worked initially. Suddenly stopped working. Printer cue just says "pending" and printing never happens.

How do I get it to go from "pending" to "printing"?

Volker Siegel
  • 13,295
Donnie Love
  • 1,171

6 Answers6

67

I found the problem. Under Settings>Printers>Policies "Enabled" was not selected. Why is this even an option?? Of all the features that used to make Ubuntu a good operating system have been stripped away, this one remains?? Unreal.

Donnie Love
  • 1,171
12

  • sudo system-config-printer

  • right click printer icon in Printers - localhost

    /properties
    /settings
    /policies

  • check "enabled"

  • close the system-config-printer tool

done.

Community
  • 1
rioguia
  • 129
3

Under Ubuntu 16.04 the same problem occurred, on my networked (wireless) HP 4635, in the same way: suddenly, without the user doing anything, and for no obvious reason. It was resolved in about the same way: click the Settings icon (gear), click System Settings, open Printers, right-click the printer, click "Enabled" in the printer's context menu to check-mark "Enabled". (If "Enabled" was already check-marked, this isn't your solution.)

ElHombre55
  • 205
2

Update to Donnie's answer:

For non-GUI CUPS user, you can adjust this setting in your CUPS web interface.

Administration => Manage Printers => Select your printer => Maintaince => Resume Printer.

It's really strange that, a single printing failure causes CUPS to prevent any further printing job. Bad design .

recolic
  • 403
2

The print jobs stay in pending state, when the printer is "disabled", as the other answers suggest. However I also noticed the checkbox gets re-enabled when the issues disappear.

In my case, the daemon cups-browsed got stuck, and restarting it using systemctl restart cups-browsed helped resolve the issue, and the print job resumed immediately.

relet
  • 199
2

Ubuntu 24.04, Epson printer

Release job under http://localhost:631 -> jobs

This can be an alternative solution to solve "random CUPS glitches".

It might be necessary to setup browser access to CUPS before this specific solution is accessible.

Comment

sudo systemctl restart cups-browsed did not work for me. And I didnt have options under printer settings described in other solutions.

Amanda
  • 340