Cups printers stop routinely

Have you checked the logs in /var/logs ?

Yes, I have checked the message log and it doesn't provide any detailed information.  Here is what I see concerning cups:

Jun 11 04:02:04 abstractstitles cups: cupsd shutdown succeeded

There is no other log (not necessarily to do with cups, look for some event that allways takes place before cups shuts down)?

Ok .. I waited for it to happen again and here are the last few days before the cups shutdown takes place

Jun 30 17:58:29 abstractstitles FaxGetty[2174]: RECV FAX: bin/faxrcvd "recvq/fax000003510.tif" "ttyS1" "000003507" ""
Jun 30 17:58:42 abstractstitles FaxGetty[2174]: MODEM USR U.S. Robotics Sportster 33600 Fax V4.1/Configuration Profile... Product type           US/Canada External Options                V32bis,V.34+ Fax Options            Class 1/Class 2.0 Line Options           Caller ID, Distinctive Ring Clock Freq             92.0Mhz Eprom                  256k Ram                    32k FLASH date             3/8/97 FLASH rev              4.1.55 DSP date               3/8/97 DSP rev                10.3.55
Jul  1 22:17:16 abstractstitles FaxGetty[2174]: ANSWER: FAX CONNECTION  DEVICE '/dev/ttyS1'
Jul  1 22:17:41 abstractstitles FaxGetty[17367]: RECV FAX (000003508): from , page 1 in 0:23, INF, 3.85 line/mm, 2-D MMR, 14400 bit/s
Jul  1 22:17:41 abstractstitles FaxGetty[17368]: RECV FAX (000003508): recvq/fax000003511.tif from , route to <unspecified>, 1 pages in 0:25
Jul  1 22:17:42 abstractstitles FaxGetty[2174]: RECV FAX: bin/faxrcvd "recvq/fax000003511.tif" "ttyS1" "000003508" ""
Jul  1 22:17:55 abstractstitles FaxGetty[2174]: MODEM USR U.S. Robotics Sportster 33600 Fax V4.1/Configuration Profile... Product type           US/Canada External Options                V32bis,V.34+ Fax Options            Class 1/Class 2.0 Line Options           Caller ID, Distinctive Ring Clock Freq             92.0Mhz Eprom                  256k Ram                    32k FLASH date             3/8/97 FLASH rev              4.1.55 DSP date               3/8/97 DSP rev                10.3.55
Jul  2 04:02:04 abstractstitles cups: cupsd shutdown succeeded
Jul  2 09:58:22 abstractstitles sshd(pam_unix)[24082]: session opened for user root by (uid=0)


So nothing transpired directly before the shutdown of cups.  The last event before the cups shutdown was 6 hours prior.  What other logs would you suggest I check?

I did look at the cron log file and 4 seconds prior to shutting down cups, it ran /etc/cron.daily, but I'm not sure how to interpret it.

Moderators, I have not received an appropriate answer to this question and it does not appear that I will receive one based on the date of the question.  Would it be possible to refund this points so I can ask the question again with the additional log information I have provided?

Do you have logrotate running?,
might it be possible that shut your cups and forgets to restart it?

What's the error message if you restart cups?
(Cups error, dmesg and/or daemon messages)

did you do:

/etc/init.d/cupsd restart
or
/etc/init.d/cupsd start

The first one may fail because it can't kill your server
The last one may fail because it still thinks it's running, so it won't start it again.

I'm not sure if I have logrotate on or not, but if you tell me how to check, I'll be glad to provide that information.

Here is the message if I run the following command:

[root@drs-faxserv01 root]# /etc/init.d/cups restart
Stopping cups: /etc/init.d/cups: line 195: kill: (17833) - No such process
                                                           [  OK  ]
Starting cups:

It hangs when it tries to restart cups .. regardless if I type restart or start

rpm -qa | grep -i log

will tell which packages are installed, wether it contains Log LoG or whatever.

[root@drs-faxserv01 root]# rpm -qa | grep -i log

sysklogd-1.4.1-12
logwatch-4.3.2-2
redhat-logviewer-0.9.3-5
redhat-logos-1.1.14.3-1
logrotate-3.6.9-1
dialog-0.9b-20020814.6
commons-logging-1.0.2-12

Yup, here it is.

logrotate-3.6.9-1

Ok you can do the following:

have cupsd log everything through the syslog daemon:

in cups config files look for line with
- Accesslog
- Errorlog
- Pagelog
Those are either followed by a filename or syslog.
If they have a filename, cups uses private files that need to be refreshed, using syslog, that burden is
shoved to the syslog daemon.

The lines should become:
Accesslog syslog
Errorlog syslog
Pagelog syslog

Then goto the logrotate config file/directory

(/etc/logrotate.conf  and/or /etc/logrotate.d/*) and look which is applicable to cups
(contains the cups keyword, or logfiles)

and rename it to some other place or make it comments.

That should help I think...

Since this only occurs roughly every 6 days, I will let you know if this resolved the issue at the end of the week....  thanks for the input.