Network printers couldn't handle large files

[Jie Li]

I have another question:
Our network printers couldn't handle large files. If we print a file bigger than 85 pages it will unable to print the rest pages and begin to recover in wrong way.
It will print multiple copies and then print from page 1 to page 3 repeatly. I have disabled the recovery function but I think it will not solve the problem completely.

[Pete Randall]

By any chance is /var filling up during this printing?

Pete

[Rodney Hills]

If their are a number of printers that have this problem, then I would take a look at the network traffic on your lan. It is possible that with too many retries only small jobs can get through.

My 2 cents...

-- Rod Hills

[Jie Li]

How can we detect if /var is filled up?

[S.K. Chan]

When you print the file will spool to the directory /var/spool/lp/request/ on the printer server side. Unless you have /var/spool/lp setup as a separate FS, the disk space that you should check is /var filesystem (on the printer server side). Just run ..
# bdf
and look for the "/var" FS line. Another think you may want to confirm is .. is the printer buffer large enough to handle the print request ?

[Pete Randall]

Run the command dmesg and check the output for messages about "vxfs: mesg 001: vx_nospace - /dev/vg00/lovl? file system full (1 block extent)" or something like that. You might also check /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log though I don't think you'll see anything there.

Pete

[Pete Randall]

The bdf command will show the current state of /var which may well be fine at this point. Use dmesg.

Pete

[Jie Li]

I checked - only 36% is used in /var. Is this possible that there are something wrong with HP's driver? How to check it out?

[S.K. Chan]

To answer that you got to provide these deatils ..
1) What is the printer model ?
2) What application are you printing it from and how ?

[Pete Randall]

You used bdf, didn't you? Check the output of the dmesg command.

Pete

[Jie Li]

I tried dmesg -- no thing is wrong.

[Pete Randall]

Thanks, that's a good sign - you're not filling up your spool files and won't end up having to enlarge /var.

Pete

[Ted Ellis_2]

couple of things.. is this happening on more than one printer? Is it always 85 pages?

and the printer type may be important...

[Ted Ellis_2]

oops.. one more thing. What is doing the printing? Is this some application that runs on the server? Or are you using the generic lp commands?

[harry d brown jr]

(1) what kind of printer?

(2) How is it attached, network, parallel to network print server, ??

(3) How much memory does the printer have?

(4) What settings on the printer are set and their values??

(5) Has the printer ever printed large documents?

(6) What are you using to spool jobs to the printer?

(7) What OS is the spooler running on?

(8) What kind of interface is being used?

(9) Are and spooler filters in use?

(10) What kind of document is being sent to the printer?

(11) Does the printer have any special font features?


live free or die
harry

[Fred Martin_1]

Are they serial printers connected to DTC's? I had a similar issue which turned out to be a telnet timing problem, not at all a printer issue.

[Jie Li]

Thank you for all your replies.
They are network printers. We use HP's jetadmin to config all our network printers. I think we are not using hp unix spool. All of them configed as PCL. We are using the printers to print plain text reports. Whenever we print big reports it will mess things up. I am not sure it is 85 pages all the time.

The printer is HP lj8150, memory is 40MB.

I think I may need a new software from HP. Which command should I use to find out our current system configuration(CPU, OS, Memory, HP UNIX Server type)?

[Rodney Hills]

If you are printing text files only about 85 pages of 60 lines per page and 120 characters per columns works out to be near 40M (same as your printer!)... Interesting...

I gather English isn't your native language, so in some of your responses I sill can't tell whether this is just one printer or several.

You also said you are not using HPUX spooler t print. What are you using?

You still need to answer Harry's questions above to determine your environment.

-- Rod Hills

[Jie Li]

Sorry if I confused you. At least two network printers can't handle large print job. Other network printers are not used to print big reports so I just guess that they are not working because all of them are using the same configuration. We are using HPNPF. I think I need to get a newer version of hpnpf from HP.