One thing that occurred to me:

I had a problem like this rather frequently in the last apartment. It had electricity issues: the ancient refrig was on same circuit as half of the apartment --including the elex outlets I had to use for the computers & printer, etc. The lights used to dim slightly whenever the refrig compressor came on. I used to hear the printer resetting itself several times/week. The printer and CUPS often disagreed -- quit working together. This is a decent HP Deskjet, on the compatible list. But printers seem to be sensitive beasts.

Restart CUPS usually fixed the problem, altho occasionally I would have to completely disconnect the printer, power, data cable & all, then wait a few min before hooking it all back up, then restart CUPS.

Now here at the new place since last May, there are no fluctuating elex issues, and no CUPS - printer issues either.

May I suggest, if you don't have already: plug all the printers into a decent UPS (rather than zip strip or whatever), which should keep the elex supply steady for your printers.

I have a spare UPS here that I am not using. I bought it several years ago for just this reason, but it works only with grounded outlets which we did not have at the old place (they were "fake" grounded). I would gladly contribute this UPS if you would like to see if it helps. I am in Worcester.

Liz J

On Wednesday, January 23, 2019, 11:12:51 PM EST, Krichevsky, Nicholas Jacob via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org> wrote:

I have an HP Officejet 8600 that only gets "paused" if I unplug it, in my testing. YMMV

From: Bradley Noyes via WLUG <wlug@lists.wlug.org>
Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2019 11:07:29 AM
To: Worcester Linux Users' Group General Discussion
Cc: Bradley Noyes
Subject: [WLUG] struggling w/ reliable printers on CUPS in small office

WLug-gers,

tl;dr: Can someone recommend a printer (or printer brand) that is reliable for printing via CUPS?

I’m struggling w/ printers in a small office and i've struggled to get any kind of guidance on-line. The volume of pages printed at the office is probably around 100 pages a day and there are 4 printers — all HPs and all consumer grade — each printer has its purpose, e.g. there's an 11x17 printer, one color laser, one BW laster, one color inkjet. The office is all iMACs, which connect to a Linux CUPS server. The iMacs were networking directly w/ the printers, but i added the CUPS server to try to mitigate the poor reliability with only marginal results. Routinely printers become “paused” in CUPS so i need to go in and ‘unpause’ them, also some printers just fall of the network entirely. Inevitably the only printer that works most of the time is the ink-jet which is a lot more expensive to re-fill.

I’m looking for a reliable solution. If anyone has a recomendation that’d be great!

Thanks,
— Brad