Large number of entries in print queue

[John A. Beard]

We have a label printer issue where on-site technicians have been working for some time now to get the device back up and running.

The jobs that go to this queue are auto-generated (through scanning) and number about 1000-1500 jobs per day. Because of the on-going problem with the printer, the queue is permanently in a stalled state and total job numbers quickly run into the 1000s. Apart from deleting the VMS queue and letting the jobs just fly out the window, I was wondering what impact having 1000s of jobs being handled by the queue manager might have on overall performance, etc. I know we can clean up the queue on a daily basis, so once again, I'm just looking for any general guidance on the potential affects of having huge numbers of jobs being submitted to the queue....thanks.

[Wim Van den Wyngaert · Accepted solution]

I once did tests on a alphastation 500 running 7.3 and created more than 10.000 entries. No problems but when the problem is solved it's best to do a
$ mcr jbc$command diag 7
to reset the queue db size.

Of course, if you monitor the queue entries in DCL or whatever, this could take a very long time to complete.

fwiw

Wim

[labadie_1]

You can clean the queue really easily

$ INIT /QUEUE JUNKQ !add /BATCH or /DEVICE
$ ASSIGN/MERGE JUNKQ the_real_q
$ DELETE/QUEUE JUNKQ

(Courtesy of Jess Goodman)

[John A. Beard]

Hi Wim,

Can you elaborate on what the parameters "diag 7" do within the command ....$ mcr jbc$command diag 7

[Hoff]

There isn't typically a huge effect here, and tens of thousands of entries in the queue database isn't all that much.

The DIAG 7 stuff is an old-time and formerly undocumented command that compresses part of the job controller database. It became documented in a copy of the release notes a while back:

--
You can shrink the size of the journal ï¬ le by having a privileged user issue the
following DCL command:
$ MCR JBC$COMMAND DIAG 7
Executing this DCL command check points the queue journal ï¬ le and shrinks the
ï¬ le to the minimum size required for queue system operation.
---

Current versions of the Job Controller have become somewhat better in related areas, too. The usual "apply current ECO kits" rule applies here.

[John A. Beard]

Thanks to one and all for the information I needed