Printer queue stops printing

[sujeet joshi]

Hi,

We found that our Network printer stops printing and when we disable and enable that printer then it again starts printing.
when i check the log but not found any error .
Please check attached log file.

Can any body tell me where the problem is?


Thanks & regards,

Sujeet

[Andrew Young_2]

Hi Sujeet.

This is a common problem with lp printing in that it does not recover well from printer errors. Depending on the make/model of the printer and the interface used it could be anything from there being no paper, the incorrect paper size is in the printer, a networking issue on the printer resulting in the printer going offline or someone may have just pressed the cancel job button or openned the printer to clear a paper jam.

Its not very helpful, but these are all the things I know have caused this problem.

What I am trying to say is that in all likelihood its a printer or networking problem and not an OS problem. A work around would be to write a script that checks the print queue every ten minutes and it if appears stuck to disable and reenable the queue. You may want to adjust the time upwards if the printer is used for printing larger print jobs

HTH

Andrew Y

[Bill Hassell]

The lp spooler has no diagnostics or status checking so you won't find any useful information with lp. Start by defining what type of network printing protocol you are using. For non-HP printers with built-in LAN cards, or for printers using a LAN-to-printer box not made by HP, the protocol is lpr/lpd and about all you can do is to use a network analyzer to trace each print job and show what happened at the end. Tools like Wireshark can accomplish this although you'll a fair amount of networking expertise to interpret the results.

If the printer or adapter is HP, then you can use the -o debugm option to write out a debug file (see man net_ljx000). For long printouts, this file can be very large. Only the end of the file is useful.