Why is a print job listed as "stalled"?

You may see the word "stalled" in lpq output, like this:

 Rank   Owner/ID                   Class Job Files                 Size Time
stalled(200sec) paco@m12-182-14+308 A   308 (stdin)   	       2111979 13:27:18
2      janeuser@m12-18+312          A   312 (stdin)              10933 13:27:30
3      joeuser@m12-182+316          A   316 (stdin)              10701 13:27:45

That means that the print server has not heard a response from the printer in the last 200 seconds (or whatever time is displayed next to "stalled". This is not necessarily indicative of a problem. A job can be stalled for several reasons:

A large job

Check the Size column - that is the size of the job in bytes. The job in the example above is 2111979 bytes, or about 2.1 MB. That is a medium-sized job. Some print jobs, such as a thesis containing lots of figures, or a printout with many color images, can be 50 or even 100 MB. They will take a very long time to print, because the job must first be transferred to the print server, processed, sent to the printer, processed by the printer, and finally printed. An average doctoral thesis, with figures and color images, can take up to 25 or 30 minutes of processing before the printer even begins to output the first page. Please be patient, and your print job will eventually print, or if you are in the queue behind this job, remove your job and use another printer.

The printer has been powered off or taken "Offline"

Please do not power off printers unless they are malfunctioning, and please notify IS&T staff (see "What should I do if a Pharos printer is broken, jammed, or needs paper or toner?") when they are malfunctioning.

The printer crashed

On rare occasions, complex PostScript commands can cause the printer to crash. Try printing your document again - if it is a long document, divide it up into smaller chunks.