Load balancing in cups
 

Not sure if this is a networking or hardware question but here goes.
I have set up a cups class for load balancing with two identical network printers.

The issue is sometimes cups sees printer one as busy and sends the remaining of the document to printer two.

People are loosing pages because they don't think to check printer two.

Is there a way to set cups so that it will only switch printers if printer one is down or offline?

Thanks,

Oh my Linux distro is Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server release 5.5 (Tikanga)

Sounds like you want each whole print job (as seen by your users) sent to the same printer.

Do you know whether your application prints a whole document as a single print job or as one per page?

I am trying to find out. The application is a 3rd party. I think the application is submitting each page as a separate job request witch is what is causing this behavior. If they could submit the whole document as one request I don't think this would happen. But I am working with the vendor to find out.

I found the solution to this issue if anyone else has this problem.
1) Make sure you have the most recent cups version. This was fixed in 1.3 and up.
2) My issue was 3rd party software. It was submitting the document as individual print jobs.
I had them rewrite the print software to submit the whole document as one request.
I also defined a default printer when setting up the cups class.