Printers Disabled on HPUX 11i Automatically

[ganzkart]

Dear All,
For the past 2 months Im experiencing problem with my HPUX print services. The printers connected at the windows XP client machines are disabled automatically. I am briefing here my setup.

I have a cluster setup with 2 rp8400 servers eimbh004 and eimbh003 running HPUX11i where the former is a database server and later an Application server. Physically, Some 250km apart we have our branch office where clients having Windows XP are using these servers and have â Print services for UNIXâ installed. The application from eimbh004-DB server sends print requests to these windows machines. The client front-end application is Oracle e-business suite 11.5.9. But we are receiving complaints from that remote site that some printers are getting disabled.
The problem occurrence doesnâ t follow any regular pattern. Sometimes a printer gets disabled several times a day but the some other day it runs without any problem. This is not an occurrence with only one printer. Almost 90 printers (physically some are in separate location) are connected and around 20 printers are getting disabled. Out of these few printers are vital for our factory production and are currently running 24*7.
So, I am using the following script as a stopgap arrangement to enable a few 24*7 critical printers that have gone down by scheduling it in cron. The non-critical rest are manually enabled if they went down.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/bin/ksh
# Script To check and enable printers that have gone down.
if [ $# = 1 ]
then
date=`/usr/bin/date`
lpstat $1 | grep Warning > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? = 0 ]
then
echo "$1 down at $date" >> /var/ganzkart/lp/errlog
ps -ef | grep lp >> /var/ganzkart/lp/$1pslog
tail -50 /var/spool/lp/log >> /var/ganzkart/lp/$1lplog
tail -50 /var/adm/syslog/syslog.log >> /var/ganzkart/lp/$1syslog
dmesg >> /var/ganzkart/lp/$1dmesglog
echo "Cancelling Print Requests for $1" >> /var/ganzkart/lp/errlog
cancel -a -e -i $1
enable $1
date1=`/usr/bin/date`
echo "$1 brought up at $date1" >> /var/ganzkart/lp/errlog
else
exit
fi
else
echo Improper Usage
fi
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This script will check the named printer whether it is enabled or down for every 5 minutes by cron and if not would enable it. It enables the printer only after getting all the required log file info at the time of disabling. Then only it is enabling the printer. This ensures the state at the time of disabling is captured in the error log. It will also put an entry in a file named /var/ganzkart/errlog.
This is a sample excerpt from yesterdayâ s /var/ganzkart/errlog file when printer a named clxzrds went down.

>>
clxzrds down at Mon May 31 21:45:01 IST 2004
Cancelling Print Requests for clxzrds
clxzrds brought up at Mon May 31 21:45:02 IST 2004
<<

I've attached the log files i collected when one printer named clxzrds went down.
Would be thankful if any of u could help me in this regard as pressure is mounting on me to solve this issue.

Best Regar

[Geoff Wild]

Is there anyway to increase the idle-timeout value on those printers?

For example, on Jet-Direct printers,

idle-timeout - specifies a timeout after which to close a connection if no
data is being sent

To change the value of "idle-timeout" on the jetdirect card:-

- telnet
- at the ">" prompt press [return] TWICE
- type "/" to show current parameter settings
- note "Idle Timeout" value (eg 30 seconds)
- type "?"
- type "idle-timeout: 270 (to increase to 270 seconds).
- type "quit" to save and exit with these settings.


Speaking of Jet Direct - I see your printers are all configured as remote - any chance they can have Jet Direct cards installed? That way you can print directly from HP-UX to them....that's what I do for 99% of my 562 printers.


How did you setup your remote printers?

I do this:

lpadmin -v/dev/null -mrmodel -pmvs2 -ormcal1mvs.mydomain.com -orplcldup

Rgds...Geoff

[harry d brown jr]

From your syslog, I noticed some overflow issues, see: http://forums1.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/questionanswer.do?threadId=586070 for further discussion on the topic.

You could be experiencing network issues - check with your network people and have them monitor the network for "outages"

live free or die
harry

[Johan Lorimier]

Hi,

I think that your overflow msgs have nothing to do with your printer issue, but have a link with you DB application

The lpched daemon can disable the printer if the printer dont answer to request and as far as iIknow if you have some trouble with printer the best way is to check wich printer is deactivated and reeanable it as you done.

The reasons why you printers are deactivated are various, it could a network pb, the powersaving of the printer or a conflict with the printer server if the printer is used in a multipurpose mode (desktop and server request),and so on.

Johan

[ganzkart]

Thanks friends,
geoff wild, harry d brown jr, johan lorimier. I was down with a fever and out of my site..sorry..could'nt meet u on time.
After this, i simulated the problem by adding another remote printer physically connected to a windows PC [within my LAN] to my HPUX server and submitted print jobs for 72 hrs. It was through and printer wasn't disabled. Just to single out the issue to a network issue as printers miles away from my site are only disabled. Could be the network issue..any specific view wud enable me to close it. Any log files gives clues about this?
Thanks,
ganzkart