If you consider the opinion of the authors of "Unix system administration
handbook" (Prentice Hall), the BSD printing system is a candidate for the
"Flakiest Program of The Year" award :-) ! There are actually quite a lot of
people in this list (including me) with /etc/printcap problems.
Here is my problem:
The HP LaserJetIV Si printers we have our LAN are equipped with Emulex NETJet
cards (Hardware: A.15 Software: 4.1). There are two ways for printing:
1) PC MSDOS/Windows 3.1 Clients with Pathworks 5.0a (LAN-Manager) submit print
jobs (PCL) which are spooled in a printing queue by LAN-Manager 5.0 on Alpha
AXP 3000-800 server running OSF/1 2.0 Unix. This queue has been configured to
pass the print job on to another queue which then sends it to the print server
hosts using lpd protocol (Parameter PASSTHROUGH).
2) Users logged in on the server use lpr -P<queue> to send print jobs.
Now, every now and then some of the printer queues are hanging when printing
LAN-Manager jobs. "lpc stat <queue>" says "Waiting for remote printer to come
up". At the same time, the Printer shows no signs of a problem. The Emulex
card is waiting for data, the printer is idle..
The problem can be solved by issuing the command "lpc restart <queue>". The
queue will continue to send the data to the printer and is empty within a
second.
Perhaps the problem is related to entries in /var/adm/syslog.dated/*/lpr.log,
such as
Jan 19 19:07:13 DLANSERV lpd[7695]: DLANSERV requests printjob laser04
Jan 19 19:07:14 DLANSERV lpd[7700]: DLANSERV requests printjob lp4
Jan 19 19:07:14 DLANSERV lpd[361]: pid=7695 (sig=-1,err=0)
Jan 19 19:07:15 DLANSERV lpd[361]: pid=7700 (sig=-1,err=0)
This kind of entry appears with every printjob spooled by the LAN-Manager.
Here4s a clip of our /etc/printcap:
#HPLJ4 Si Direktion (Queue established by Pathworks)
laser02:\
:af=/usr/adm/lpacct:\
:if=/usr/lbin/pcsaclass:\
:lf=/usr/net/servers/lanman/logs/lplogs/laser02:\
:lp=/dev/null:\
:sd=/usr/net/servers/lanman/spool/laser02:
#HPLJ4 Si Direktion (sends jobs to remote printer host laser02 with remote
parameter PASSTHRU)
lp2|lp2|2|hpdr2:\
:af=/usr/adm/lpacct:\
:br#2:\
:lf=/usr/net/servers/lanman/logs/lplogs/lp2:\
:mx#0:\
:rm=laser02:\
:rp=PASSTHRU:\
:sd=/usr/spool/lpd2/lp2_sd:\
:xf=/usr/lbin/xf:
#HPLJ4 Si Direktion (sends jobs to remote printer host laser02 with remote
parameter TEXT)
lp2_text|hpdr2_text:\
:af=/usr/adm/lpacct:\
:lf=/usr/net/servers/lanman/logs/lplogs/lp2_text:\
:lp=:\
:mx#0:\
:rm=laser02:\
:rp=TEXT:\
:sd=/usr/spool/lpd2_text/lp2_text_sd:\
:xf=/usr/lbin/xf:
Now, this is a rather big inquiry, but perhaps there is someone out there with
similar problems?
Y.S.
__________________________________________________________________________
Thomas Meyer email:meyert_at_dla-marbach.de
- -Sysadmin- Telefon:+49-7144-848-141
Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach Fax: ...-191
Schillerhoehe 8-10
D-71672 Marbach
__________________________________________________________________________
Received on Mon Jan 23 1995 - 18:54:09 NZDT