I tend to send things to print, even when not connected to my printer (via usb). This allows it to print the minute I connect the printer, which is nice when I am on my laptop. It used to work, even if I didn't connect my printer for a day or two, but now it doesn't. The print jobs seem to die after 3 hours. Any help?
1 Answer
Printing in OS X is handled by CUPS, the Common Unix Printing System. Older versions of OS X had older versions of CUPS. A new It's not a bug, It's a "feature" was added in CUPS 1.6, which corresponds to Mac OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion, in order to prevent stuck jobs.
The MaxJobTime option, which defaults to 10800 seconds (3 Hours), will cancel the active print job on a printer that has timed out. The next job in the queue will start, either printing or eventually timing out.
From the cups.conf man page:
MaxJobTime seconds
Specifies the maximum time a job may take to print before it is canceled. The default is 10800 seconds (3 hours). Set to 0 to disable cancellation of "stuck" jobs.
Editing /etc/cups/cupsd.conf to include MaxJobTime 0 to disable this "Feature".
In my specific case, I used to be on 10.6.8 Snow Leopard until finally updating to 10.10 Mavericks, and wasn't aware of the change.
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