Zebra Printers

[Wilfred Chau_1]

Hi all,
Does anyone come across a situation where the print spooler stopped while the Zebra printer is printing labels. And the spooler resume printing, it prints but from the very beginning? It this related to the TCP/IP settings? or Should I disable TCP/IP Timeout Checking on the printer?

Any help would be great!!!

[A. Clay Stephenson]

This is normal spooler behavior. When a communications error or a printer error occurs, the spooler resends the entire job. I doubt that tweaking printer settings are going to help. You need to concentrate on making the network connections as robust as possible.

Another possible solution is to break the print jobs into smaller batches so that when a restart is required the problems are not as severe.

[Wilfred Chau_1]

Thanks A. Clay for the info. But what would happen if the printer is out of paper? I believe a LaserJet would resume from where it didn't have the paper to print. And not the entire job.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Wilfred,

The paper out scenario would depend entirely on whether the entire job has spooled into the ptr's buffer or not. If it hasn't & the time to replace the paper & put the ptr back on-line exceeds the TCP timeout value THEN it's going to resend the entire job. Believe the same would be true for the laserjet...BUT...remember that a laserjet will probably have a MUCH larger buffer than a label printer.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Wilfred Chau_1]

Should I increase any of the TCP values(using ndd -set /dev/tcp) to better optimize the spooler's performance?

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

It's a complicated answer. That's because there are so many ways to connect printers. Simply put, if the printer script detects an error and returns a non-zero value, the spooler disables the printer with a reason code equal to the error number. JetDirect printers (printers using external or internal JetDirect interfaces) can return 'soft' errors and hpnpf (the printer communication program) will restart the job. That's because there is no way to know where the job was interrupted. With downloaded fonts, graphics, bitmaps, etc, the error recovery process is very complex and very printer dependent.

As far as the entire spooler stopping, that is not normal in any way. But since the Zebra printer does not come with a printer script, I would look at exactly how this printer is connected and how it interfaces with the spooler. If the printer is connected by LAN, then someone has created a custom interface and you'll have to troubleshoot the process.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Again, tweaking TCP settings is going to make very little difference. The kinds of things that will make a difference are speed/duplex mismatches between your printer and its associated switch port. Believe it or not mismatched setting will continue to work albeit very poorly. I would make sure that those settings are hard-set on both the printer and the switch port - do not rely upon auto-negotiate. By all means look for lp patches and network printer software patches.
Do not read into a Laserjet's recovery something that a Zebra should do. The lp system simply sends the job to a printer and looks for a result code. If it ain't zero, lp tries again when the printer is again enabled.

[jackeelias]

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