Solving "The printer may not exist"

When printing documents to our IPP printer connected via LAN, they would sometimes not print. The printer's document queue would have the print jobs paused, and they would not be printed unless we unlock the print settings screen with an administrator password and click "resume".

The Gnome printer details would show The printer may not exist or is unavailable at this time, and CUPS error log would have another error: The printer configuration is incorrect or the printer no longer exists.

The reason for the pausing is that we click "print", then walk down to to the room with the printer and turn it on. That takes some time, and when that isn't fast enough, CUPS pauses the printer forever.

Solution​

Michael R Sweet helped me to find a solution for CUPS 2.4.10:

First modify /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and add ErrorPolicy retry-current-job. This will be used for new printers.

Existing printers already have a copy of that setting and need to be modified manually:

1. Find the printer name with lpstat, laser2 here:

   $ lpstat -t
   scheduler is running
   system default destination: laser2
   device for laser2: http://192.168.3.99/ipp
   laser2 accepting requests since Mon Aug 31 21:27:43 2026
   printer laser2 is idle.  enabled since Mon Aug 31 21:27:43 2026
   

2. Configure that printer to retry jobs indefinitely:

        $ lpadmin -p laser2 -o printer-error-policy=retry-current-job

Alternatively, you can configure the printer in the CUPS web interface running on http://localhost:631/: Administration > Manage Printers > Click Printer name > Set default options > Policies > Error Policy

ErrorPolicy​

man cupsd.conf says:

ErrorPolicy retry-job (default)

Specifies that a failed print job should be retried at a later time unless otherwise specified for the printer.

ErrorPolicy retry-current-job (new setting)

Specifies that a failed print job should be retried immediately unless otherwise specified for the printer.

To me it is not really clear that retry-job causes the printer to stop after a minute.