[Pkg-cups-devel] Bug#631025: cups: change default ErrorPolicy for network printers

[Till Kamppeter]

On 06/21/2012 05:41 AM, Martin Pitt wrote:
> Till Kamppeter [2012-06-20 18:17 +0200]:
>> CUPS has the retry-job error policy as default only for Ubuntu and
>> there reports like yours never showed up, and also no bug reports
>> for asking to return to the original stop-printer by default.
>>
>> pitti, should we activate the patch to switch to the retry-job error
>> policy as default also for Debian?
>
> I have no strong opinion about this. I would be a bit hesitant to
> change it so close to the Wheezy final freeze, but if there are good
> reasons for it and some other Debian users agree, sure.
>
>

Why are there two different defaults for Debian and Ubuntu. What are the 
motivations in each of the distros?

I prefer retry-job as it confuses unexperienced users less. In addition, 
the backends are badly designed or too enterprise-oriented, making 
queues getting stopped on temporary failures which users can easily fix, 
like printer not turned on, cable not plugged in, paper/toner empty, bad 
per-job option settings. If queues are stopped by failures then they 
only should get stopped by permanent failures, like queue being set up 
with wrong driver or wrong device URI, filter required by PPD not 
installed, not executable, or segfaulting.

The default configuration of CUPS (and every other subsystem) should be 
optimized for desktop/small network users, as these are the ones who do 
know less about configuring and most need our help. Enterprise system 
administrators have more ease to change the configuration and can make 
queues getting stopped when the toner runs out if thwy want it.

Therefore I suggest that, in both Debian and Ubuntu

1. ErrorPolicy is et to retry-job

2. CUPS listens to remote printer broadcasts by default

Also Debian and Ubuntu should use the same defaults.

    Till