LPR Printing problem

[Mark Lawley]

We have a problem trying to print a large document from a mainframe on our HP-UX server using lpr.
The error we receive states there is not enough space on temporary device. Does anybody know how to tell which filesystem this temporary device refers to and how it can be changed to a filesystem that does have enough space.

[Olav Baadsvik]

Hi,
If you print remote from a mainframe to
a hp-ux machine, a copy of the file will
be stored in /var/spool/lp/request/printer_name
directory on the hp-ux machine.
You should see how much free space you have
on the /var filesystem prior to printing.
If this is less than the size of the file
you try to print you should increase the
size of /var on the hp-ux machine.

Regards
Olav

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

lpr is a Berkeley term...HP-UX is actually SysV when it comes to printing (the lpr 'command' is really a translator script for the lp command). HP-UX supports remote printing and has rlpdaemon running to accept these remote jobs.

lp uses /var for temporary space and a typical system should have 1000 megs to 5000 megs in /var, especially for wide fluxuations in the size of /var. However, a better choice is to create a separately mounted filesystem for /var/spool and make that logical volume 1000 megs in size. There is no way to redirect the lp spooler to use another filesystem (nor would you want to) as /var is the correct location.

Since the spooler reported out of space, there are probably a large number of error messages on your console and in dmesg and most likely other programs have crashed due to lack of space in /var. This is the most critical filesystem in HP-UX and should be resized to gigabytes in size depending on what you are doing with your system (spooling, email, patches, logfiles, etc).