Does anyone know something about /var/spool/lp/tmplock?

[Glen Liu]

Client told me their printers were out of work today. And the I found, by lpstat -t, the requests were not processes since yesterday. So I tryed lpshut. It said "scheduler is not running". I killed the lpsched and tryed to star it again. But it just reponsed with "lpsched: scheduler could not be started". So I checked the privileges of all relative directories and files and they were all ok. And there was no SCHEDLOCK and FIFO file. I then used "mkdir old; mv outputq qstatus pstatus old" under /var/spool/lp. But I still cannot start up lpsched. Finally I noticed there was a file /var/spool/lp/tmplock. I changed it by "mv tmplock tmplock.old" and then the lpsched could be stared.

My question is:
What is /var/spool/lp/tmplock? What for? Why exist?

Thx.

[Victor BERRIDGE · Accepted solution]

May this help:
Document Id : A1792207
Problem Description

I have been unable to get the lpsched program to run. I removed the
file /usr/spool/lp/SCHEDLOCK, but the scheduler program still will
not run. What can I do?

Configuration Info

HP 9000 series 300/400, 600/800
HP-UX version 7.0x

Solution

In order for the scheduler program (lpsched) to run, two files cannot
exist on the system. They are the SCHEDLOCK and tmplock files (both
in the /usr/spool/lp directory).

The SCHEDLOCK file is documented in the HP-UX System Administration
Tasks manual (HP Part Number 98594-900061), Chapter 7, or the HP
9000 Series 800 HP-UX System Adminstration Tasks Manual, Volume I
(HP Part Number 92453-90038), Chapter 7. However, the tmplock
file is not mentioned in any HP-UX version 7.0 manuals.

The tmplock file is used in an algorithm which creates the SCHEDLOCK
file. On rare occasions, if the lpsched program is killed within a
small window, this file will be left on the system. Then, if this
file is not removed, the lpsched program will not run.

Service Request 5000-651463 has been submitted to look into this
problem. Unless this algorithm is changed, it would be beneficial to
remove /usr/spool/lp/tmplock in "/etc/rc" along with the SCHEDLOCK
file.

Alternative Keywords

LP SPOOLER



all the best
Victor

[Glen Liu]

Thank you , victor.

But in sentence "On rare occasions, if the lpsched program is killed within a
small window, this file will be left on the system", what's the meaning of "killed within a small window"?

And the system is running HP-UX 10.20.

Thx.

[Victor BERRIDGE]

Hi Glen,
Second try:
Here are 2 Document you could read:
1)
Date : 2000 Feb 03
Description : How do I resolve LP Spooler hang situations
Document Id : KBAN00000182

2)
Date : 1997 May 15
Description : Spooler Rebuild Procedure for 10.x Systems (aka SpoolKick)
Document Id : BA960324001

If you cant access them, try to do a search from your technical Knowledge Base Home, or sen me your Email and I will try to send them to you...

All the best
Victor