Printer is stuck at processing status

Question

I have an old Photosmart C4500 and I want to print a page from Firefox on Ubuntu16.04. Yet the printer is stuck at processing status. I can still cancel the task but and relaunch it but it remains stuck. I also removed and reinstalled the printer but it doesn't changed anything. It doesn't seems the printer actually receive data.

Do you have any idea on how to make this work ?

I clicked on additional printer settings and was either able to add a new printer

Or to troubleshoot but it told me that "there is no obvious solution to your problem". Furthermore I wasn't able to log its report as far as it doesn't accept my password.

mike@mike-thinks:~$ su -c 'journalctl -u cups.service --since="None" --until="2018-11-04 10:19:41"' > troubleshoot-logs.txt
Password: 
su: Authentication failure

Solution

I was having a combination of issues, including this one:

• using the system settings to manage printers gets my jobs stuck at processing. <--- OP's main issue
• wanting to install an HPLIP printer, and not CUPS managed/driverless stuff? <--- also OP's issue
• needing to install the printer from additional printer settings but getting stuck at auth (maybe someone else is lucky enough not to need to do this)
• getting stuck at auth because the additional printer settings does not maintain that I am an admin user when opening it, so needing to disable authentication. (ideally we figure out how to run these additional settings as an admin - but until then... use my [probably vulnerable] solution.)

So taking others' advice, I tried to install the printer from the additional printer settings, but ran into authentication issues, where every time I tried to install a printer under those settings, I was prompted for user/pass.

---

Not my solution, but maybe yours

I saw other answers where people were being prompted for this, and their solution was to:

1. Pause the cups server. Open the terminal and type sudo service cups stop
2. Edit the /etc/cups/printers.conf file, commenting out (by prepending a # to) the line that has AuthRequired username,password. This line did not exist for me, so it was extra confusing because I don't know what the username/password is that I keep getting prompted for. Maybe you have this issue and that's why I will leave this answer.
3. Start the cups server back up sudo service cups start

---

My solution

So I found another answer that helped me remove the admin user as a requirement to adding/removing printers.

This is kind of dumb and annoying, because the "additional printer settings" does not continue to run as an admin and it doesn't seem to recognize what user I am, so that's the whole reason this is necessary. I cannot find a way to run these additional settings as an admin user, so this solution is best for now. (note that I am in individual and not going to use this on a network other than my home).

1. Pause cups server (same as above) sudo service cups stop
2. edit the /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and look for <Policy default> and underneath that, comment out the lines AuthType ... and Require user... for any area you do not want to require auth. (Commenting out means prepending the line with a #)
3. start the cups server again. (same as above) sudo service cups start
4. install the printer from the additional settings area
5. print test page
6. profit.

Mine looks like this:

# All administration operations require an administrator to authenticate...
<Limit CUPS-Add-Modify-Printer CUPS-Delete-Printer CUPS-Add-Modify-Class CUPS-Delete-Class CUPS-Set-Default CUPS-Get-Devices>
#AuthType Default
#Require user @SYSTEM
Order deny,allow
</Limit>

# All printer operations require a printer operator to authenticate...
<Limit Pause-Printer Resume-Printer Enable-Printer Disable-Printer Pause-Printer-After-Current-Job Hold-New-Jobs Release-Held-New-Jobs Deac$
#AuthType Default
#Require user @SYSTEM
Order deny,allow
</Limit>

Comments

[Brent Bradburn]

Try clearing the queue and printing a test page. If that isn't working, it may be that the printer address is wrong (maybe it changed) or the printer is offline for some reason. Admittedly, "Processing" isn't a very helpful message for this case...

[Revolucion for Monica]

Actually it is additional printer settings but didn't managed to solve the problem from there.