SUMMARY: Printer queue problems

From: Vicki Rosenzweig (murphy!acmcr!vr@uunet.UU.NET)
Date: Fri Aug 06 1993 - 21:01:57 CDT


This list is wonderful! I apologize for taking up people's time
with what turned out to be a simple question, but there isn't
much material on printer queues out there. I hope this summary
will help someone.

>Sun managers,

> I have an odd problem with printing. We have two
>IPXs, one of which is our print server, and a 3/80. All
>three machines share the same printer, an Apple Laserwriter IIf.
>The machines are connected by ethernet, and have some cross-mounted
>partitions, but each has its own / and /usr. I attempted to
>print a postscript file (or so it was billed) that someone sent
>me this morning. The printer blinked for several minutes, but
>nothing came out. I killed the print job, and power cycled the printer.
>Since then, we've had trouble printing anything. I have rebooted
>all three machines. The print server (acmcr) is now willing to
>print, as is the other IPX, but the 3/80 is queueing print jobs
>up, and lpq produces the following message:
>no entries

>gazelle: waiting for queue to be enabled on acmcr
>Rank Owner Job Files Total Size
>1st au 712 standard input 10795 bytes
>2nd reviews 713 standard input 5138 bytes
>3rd reviews 714 standard input 5138 bytes
>4th reviews 715 standard input 5138 bytes
>5th reviews 716 standard input 5138 bytes

>Does anyone have any suggestions or advice to offer? I have
>RTFM on lpc and lpq, and looked at a couple of system administration
>books (Nemeth et al, and Frisch's book from O'Reilly) and found
>nothing helpful.

>I will, of course, summarize.

Bill Stapleton <wls@csd4.csd.uwm.edu> sent the first reply, which worked:

Since "lpq" works, the permissions files are set-up right. What you
can try is, as root on your 3/80, type "lpc abort name-of-printer", then
"lpc start name-of-printer". Sometimes a remote "lpd" doesn't always
recognize when the other end comes up after it's been down.

--

I got similar advice from Geert Jan de Groot <geertj@ica.philips.nl>:

rsh gazelle -l root lpc stop lpc abort (kill eventually lingering daemons) lpc start

That should do.

Geert Jan ---------- kmah@DCS-Systems.COM (Kevin Mah) suggested:

Killing the lpd processes is not enough. You must also remove all the lock files in the spool directories.

e.g. /var/spool/lpd/lock

Then, just to be clean, do a "lpc restart all".

Also, one other note. Try using pageview to load your postscript` file. If you also bring up the edit tool within it you can view any display errors.

(I had, in fact, cleared out the lock files, and omitted this from my message.) ------------- bobi@vswr.sps.mot.com (Bob Izenberg) and Sidney Pio de Campos (sidney@ifi.unicamp.br) suggested checking hosts.equiv and hosts.lpd. A good suggestion; I should have mentioned that I`d been printing successfully with this setup for months. ------------------ And kuhn@math.harvard.edu (Robert M. Kuhn) said

What I do in like circumstances is to su root, run lpc, clear the queue, abort, stop and disabled the printer then start and enable it. I hope it works.

(Had the simpler suggestion not worked, I would have tried this next, but I had hoped to save my queue; Bill Stapledon's advice allowed me to do this. Thanks again, everyone.) Vicki Rosenzweig vr%acmcr.uucp@murphy.com



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