The printer is idle

There are several reasons why you might find a printer idle and enabled but with print requests still queued for it:

• The print requests need to be filtered. Slow filters run one at a time to avoid overloading the system. Until a print request has been filtered (if it needs slow filtering), it will not print. Use the following command to see if the first waiting request is being filtered.
  
  lpstat -l -o

• The printer has a fault. After a fault has been detected, printing resumes automatically, but not immediately. The print service waits about five minutes before trying again and continues trying until a request is printed successfully. You can force a retry immediately by enabling the printer as follows:
  
  enable printer-name

• A dial-out printer is busy or does not answer, or all dial-out ports are busy. As it does following a fault, the print service waits five minutes before trying to reach a dial-out printer again. If the dial-out printer cannot be reached for an hour or two (depending on the reason), the print service finally alerts you to a possible problem. You can force a retry immediately by enabling the printer as follows:
  
  enable printer-name