topic Re: HP-UX 11.31 print requests to network printer stays in queue in Operating System - HP-UX

HP-UX 11.31 print requests to network printer stays in queue

Ravi-Joshi — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:36:17 GMT

Hi,

I am having network printing issues on hp-ux 11.31.

The network printer is configured on the windows servers. We created a queue on unix to point to the windows server.

On the unix side, the printer is enabled and is accepting requests.

lpstat -pPrinter shows good.

lpstat -vPrinter shows it is pointing to windows server.

lpstat -oPrinter shows that it is accepting request.

The physical printer is configured correctly on the win server and is on.

The ping b/w unix server and win server works fine. I can telnet to port 515 print service on windows.

Howevere, when I send a test page on unix to this network printer, it just sits in the /var/spool/lp/request/printer/ queue.

lpshced is running.

Any ideas, what to check, why the requests are sitting in spooler queue and does not get routed to the windows server

Thanks,

Ravi

Re: HP-UX 11.31 print requests to network printer stays in queue

Dennis Handly — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:47:54 GMT

(Note: This is really a remote printer connection, not network.)

What version of Windows do you have?

I assume you have enabled Unix spooling there?

Re: HP-UX 11.31 print requests to network printer stays in queue

Ravi-Joshi — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 21:23:18 GMT

Yes the windows spooling is enabled. I believe what you mean is the print service is enabled and started

on windows server.

Ravi

Re: HP-UX 11.31 print requests to network printer stays in queue

Bill Hassell — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 00:52:25 GMT

Actually, you want Unix print service turned on. It is not enabled by default.

Personally, I prefer to bypass Windows print servers completely unless the target printer has no network interface. Also note that none of the -o options will work with a Windows server. The biggest obstacles will be with non-ASCII printers. The vast majority of all low priced inkjet and laser printers are incompatible with most Unix systems. These are known as Windows-only because they require a massvie formatter, complete with fonts, scaling and rasterization. This moves the formatting electronics out of the printer and into the local host. Printer mfrs are not writing drivers for HP-UX, including the HP printer division.

Re: HP-UX 11.31 print requests to network printer stays in queue

Ravi-Joshi — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 15:11:29 GMT

Thank you Bill.

We are a big e-commerce shop. Our prod hp-ux servers send PDF files to the printer queue and

it then gets printed at the remote site. There are 1000s of printers. They have been working well.

For some reason, they stopped working since Feb 11.

Initial investigation with few printers using lpstat, pinging win server, telnetting to port 515 on win server,

looking at the win server to make sure printer is there and is on and ready state. All look good.

Ths OS is hp-ux 11.31.

Win team rebooted the win server. We sent a test page, it sits in /var/spool/lp/request/printer/

lpshced is running. I believe lpsched should pick up these request and process them and put a log

entry in /var/adm/lp/log

Do you mean to say that lpstat -oPrinter does not work on 11.31?

Thx

Ravi

Re: HP-UX 11.31 print requests to network printer stays in queue

Dennis Handly — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 04:25:01 GMT

>Do you mean to say that lpstat -oPrinter does not work on 11.31?

This works fine for me.

You may want to download tusc at attach to lpsched to see what's going on:
tusc -fp -ea -o tusc.out lpsched-PID

You should see an idle loop and checks on /var/spool/lp/FIFO.

Then open /var/spool/lp/pstatus & outputq.

Then fork and open /var/spool/lp/request/printer-name/print-file. And finally an execvp of an interface file:

/etc/lp/interface/printer-name

Then a bunch of shell commands.

Finally it invokes: /usr/sbin/rlp

Then it writes the data to a socket.

Re: HP-UX 11.31 print requests to network printer stays in queue

Ravi-Joshi — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:12:03 GMT

Thank you Dennis. Appreciate your help. Surely, I am going to try your suggestion too.

The issue got resolved by zeroing /var/spool/lp/outputq

Looks like the outputq file may have been corrupted. What we did is -

lpshut

> /var/spool/lp/outputq

/usr/sbin/lpsched

This made the scheduler pick up jobs from the queue and send it to win server for further printing on to

a remote printer.

Thank you both for your assistance.

Ravi

Re: HP-UX 11.31 print requests to network printer stays in queue

Ravi-Joshi — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 15:12:58 GMT

Issue resolved.