Printing stops on tcp/ip printer queues

[Allain L'Etourdie]

I have a number of tcpip printer queues setup printing on differenf dot matrix printers(epson dfx5000,compaq la450,genicom la30) with lantronix mps100 print servers. They all stop printing after printing only about 2 lines but the job doeasn't appear in the job que. Its as if the job completed successfully. Can anybody suggest something for that problem?

Thank you very much for any help.

[Heinz W Genhart]

Hi Allain

Welcome to the ITRC Forum.

Did this work before?
Can you supply some mor Information, like the output from Show Queue/full?

It sounds to me like some handshaking does not work properly. Wrong cable between printer and Lantornix or some settings on the Lantronix.

I think you should supply some more information

Regards

Heinz

[Allain L'Etourdie]

Hi Heinz,
thanks for your reply. Yes the printers were working fine before until sometime after we switched server hardware. Was using old compaq hw but now using new hp ds25 with image restore from old to new,so no change in settings. Using OVMS 7.3-2 and tcpip v5.4.
As requested output from show que:

Printer queue SEYC00_MAT5_7, idle, on SEYA03::"10.195.4.100:9100",
mounted form BILL1_PRINT (stock=DEFAULT)
< LA450 Allain Test Printer >
/BASE_PRIORITY=4 /DEFAULT=(FEED,FORM=DEFAULT) /LIBRARY=LA_DEVCTL Lowercase
/OWNER=[SYSTEM] /PROCESSOR=UCX$TELNETSYM /PROTECTION=(S:M,O:D,G:R,W:S)

Some customization has been done eg.form,processor,library but all was working fine before.

[Marc Van den Broeck]

Allain,

add /retain=error for the queue then you can see if something went wrong while printing.

Rgds
Marc

[Volker Halle]

Allain,

each TELNETSYM print queue should have an associated logfile:

SYS$SYSTEM:TCPIP$TELNETSYM_queue.LOG

You can probably see error messages in that file.

Volker.

[Allain L'Etourdie]

Hello Marc and Volker,
thanks for the replies, I'll try your suggestions tomorrow.

Thanks a lot and have a nice weekend from the Seychelles.

[Allain L'Etourdie]

Hello Heinz, Marc and Volker,
thanks for the replies, I'll try your suggestions tomorrow.

Thanks a lot and have a nice weekend, from the Seychelles.

[Jon Pinkley]

The lantronix mps100 is an micro parallel port server.

http://www.lantronix.com/data-center-management/print-servers/lps1t-mps100.html

That's what you are using?

What else changed besides the upgrade to the DS25? Is there now a different path to the printers? Specifcally, what this upgrade part of a data center move/reorganization?

Are your printers local, or going via a WAN or Internet VPN link?

How large are the print jobs you are sending? If they are small, they may have already left the VMS system, and could be sitting in some intermediate buffer.

What happens when you attemp to print another job to the same queue? Do the first two lines of that file appear on the printer?

[Allain L'Etourdie]

Jon,
Yes I am using that same print server.nothing changed apart from the server hw and added a few more print servers. Most of the printers are local,2 over wan,1 over vpn. Serially connected printers are working fine(connected using latcp ports).
Print job sizes vary but my tests have been with small jobs which are only about 10 blocks.
If I submit the same job again it still prints only the 1st 2 lines and the job dissapears from the que which could mean vms sent the job but getting lost somewhere in the middle as you suggested.
I haven't tried the suggestions from the other replies yet but if you have any other idea please send it my way.

Thanks

[Jon Pinkley]

Allain,

Try the "retain on error" examining the log files as suggested by others.

As a control case, do you have any printers using tcpip$telnetsym that are not using the lantronix mps100 print servers? For example, an hp laserjet with built in network port. If those experience the same problems, then it probably isn't related the mps100 print servers.

Did you apply any patches or TCPIP eco kits between the time things worked and stopped working?

Also, you may want to try the troubleshooting tips in http://www.lantronix.com/pdf/eps_ref.pdf section B.5 on page B-3

Specifically, telnet into the mps100, then issue "Test Port Server
Count 100" and see if more than two lines print. If that works, use "Monitor Port 1 Counters" and watch while you are printing jobs.

Last question for now. You stated you had added some new printers, did you upgrade firmware on the mps100s at that time? It seems odd that all the print servers would display the same symptoms if the problems were due to poor connections on the parallel "centronics" connetion.

We use Epson DFX-5000+ printers, and external hp print servers (because we can't find a micro print server small enough to directly connect to the printer and still close the back "door".