Max. number of printers for lp & lpshed?

[Kirk MacLean_2]

Is there a hard limit for the number of printers that can be configured and/or effectively sheduled whithin the lp subsystem of HP-UX?

Model: 9000/800/L3000-6x
Main Memory: 2048 MB
Processors: 2
OS mode: 64 bit

Regards,

Kirk

[Jaime Bolanos Rojas. · Accepted solution]

Kirk,

You want want to reference this document if you are going to run so many printers on that server.

http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/search.do?category=c0&prevQueryString=&mode=id&searchString=4000090882&searchCrit=allwords&docType=Security&docType=Patch&docType=EngineerNotes&docType=BugReports&docType=Hardware&docType=ReferenceMaterials&docType=ThirdParty&dateRange=all

[A. Clay Stephenson]

There are no hard limits and some UNIX boxes with about your level of resources have thousands of printers attached. Perhaps the biggest drawback to having many, many printers under the standard lp subsystem is that the scheduler must be stopped before adding a new queue or removing an existing queue which can result in some jobs being restarted when lpsched is run again. You might consider another spooler so that printers can be easily added or removed "on the fly".

[Kirk MacLean_2]

Jaime Great information, thank you!

Clay, are you referring to HPDPS or is there another I should be aware of?

Thank you,

Kirk

[Bill Hassell]

Plain old lp spooler has no limits. But as Clay states, the sheer number of printers can be a huge sysadmin task. For instance, adding a new printer means shutdown of lpsched -- this could take 10 minutes for 5000 printers (due to queue scans and cancels for active jobs). Starting lp after adding the printer may take even longer. Once working, the scheduler will run OK with thousands of printers, but be prepared to assign a fulltime sysadmin to handle printer problems (ie, out of paper, paper jam, network problems, etc). The lp spooler provides ZERO diagnostics for printer states.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Have a look at www.easysw.com. These are the guys who developed EasySpooler which became CUPS. You might consider a trial download and license of their product.

[Kirk MacLean_2]

Because of the amount of customization we have for network printing, we are going to continue using lp for printing at this time. I will be examining the kernel parameters as recommended. Further investigation will be done with alternate printing methods; those recommendations were helpful and will be taken seriously. This has once again proved to be an invaluable resource.

Blessings,

Kirk

[A. Clay Stephenson]

You should note that many of the replacement printer solutions for UNIX are command-line compatible to their standard lp counterparts. You applications can still invoke "lp -dmyprinter -o postscript,nobanner file1 file2" and as long as the newer lp is earlier in the PATH than the standard version, everything works. Ditto for commands like lpstat.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

You should note that many of the replacement printer solutions for UNIX are command-line compatible to their standard lp counterparts. Your applications can still invoke "lp -dmyprinter -o postscript,nobanner file1 file2" and as long as the newer lp is earlier in the PATH than the standard version, everything works. Ditto for commands like lpstat.