We have a 2100 system with 3.2c with (3) Rapid print 200's.
If we configure the Rapidprints as remote printers (lpd) and send jobs to
them
the printers print a piece, pause, print a piece, pause....unfortunatly
when
they pause it can throw off the columns (Printronix line printers). Is
this
normal with them running as remote printers?
The printers work great if configured using "nic_print" program, which
takes spooled output into a pipe then sends it to an IP socket. The only
problem is the jobs don't stay in the spooler, they sit in the pipe
waiting
for the rapid printer to take more data. (normally this would be fine,
however
if you need to kill a job, you have to kill everything in the pipe, kill
the nic_print
daemon, restart the daemon). Sometimes there can be 2 - 3 jobs sitting in
the pipe and some half in and half still in the spooler (the pipe is
64k).
I also configured the rapidprints to work under LAT, but we had problems
with
losing the ends of some print jobs.
The question is (or the problem as I think it is). How long does the lpd
daemon
wait if it tries to send to a remote printer before it attempts again.
What I think
is happening is the job is too big for the print server buffer, so it
won't accept
the whole thing at once, and the lpd daemon gets the I'm busy and comes
back later. If this is the case, is there anyway to change the time frame
that
lpd waits for the busy signal.
When using the nic_print program, the program does the sending/waiting
and
doesn't use the lpd daemon.
Looking at the man files, it talks about the /spool/*/minfree ASCII file
for the
minimum amount of disk to use as to not overwhelm the printer (which
sounds
like what is happening). Unfortunatly, it doesn't go into detail
regarding this
file. How do you use this file? should the # of block be equal to the
amount
of memory in the printer server (I think it's 2k) or do you need to
calculate
based on memory and print speed (we have 2 600lpm & 1 300lpm) vs the
wait time of the lpd daemon.
Any help would be appreciated,
Thanx
George Gallen
ggallen_at_slackinc.com
Received on Thu Apr 03 1997 - 23:21:54 NZST