Troubleshooting LPD printing

[Camiel]

Hello everyone,

I'm looking at a strange problem printing from OpenVMS to a printserver that accepts LPD jobs.
Printing to that printserver from a Windows workstation works as expected, but printing from OpenVMS takes an extremely long time (28 minutes for just 21 blocks), and often times out on bigger printjobs (100 blocks and over). What would be the best approach to troubleshoot this? The log-file for the printer shows various different error messages as shown in the following log file extract (edited out duplicates of these error messages; different messages seem to appear in random order):

PD01 VANDERHOEVEN_1 » ty mfcwag200170.log

%%%%%%%%%%%% 11-JUN-2007 11:40:52.21 %%%%%%%%%%%%

%TCPIP-I-LPD_LOGSUC, using log file TCPIP$LPD_ROOT:[000000]MFCWAG200170.LOG


%%%%%%%%%%%% 11-JUN-2007 11:40:52.21 %%%%%%%%%%%%

%TCPIP-I-LPD_SYMBRUN, symbiont is running the queue MFCWAG200170


TCPIP LPD configuration data:
LPD Spooler Directory : TCPIP$LPD_ROOT:[000000]
Retry-Interval : 0 00:05:00.00
Retry-Maximum : 0 01:00:00.00
Idle-Timeout : 0 00:05:00.00
Inbound-Queues-Per-Node : 1
Utility-Queues-Per-Node : 0
Receiver-Debug : 0
Symbiont-Debug : 0
Utilities-Debug : 0
Loop-Max : 0
Droptime : 0
Probetime : 0
PS-Extensions : LPS
Stream-Passall : FALSE
VMS-Flagpages : FALSE
Persistent-Server : FALSE
Keepalive : FALSE
Synchronize-All-Jobs : TRUE
Setup-NoLF : FALSE
1st-VFC-Prefix-Special : FALSE

PCB for printer
LP: MFCWAG200170
RM: pd0013s.******.****.nl
RP: MFCWAG200170
SD: /TCPIP$LPD_ROOT/MFCWAG200170
LF: /TCPIP$LPD_ROOT/000000/MFCWAG200170.LOG
BP: MFCWAG200170
PA: FALSE
ND: FALSE
CR: FALSE
SN: FALSE

lpd$ast_handler save_entry_number = 9853

%%%%%%%%%%%% 11-JUN-2007 11:49:49.12 %%%%%%%%%%%%

%SYSTEM-F-TIMEOUT, device timeout

lpd$ast_handler save_entry_number = 9847

%%%%%%%%%%%% 11-JUN-2007 12:43:50.59 %%%%%%%%%%%%

%SYSTEM-F-LINKDISCON, network partner disconnected logical link
-SYSTEM-F-LINKDISCON, network partner disconnected logical link

lpd$ast_handler save_entry_number = 9882

%%%%%%%%%%%% 11-JUN-2007 12:52:50.58 %%%%%%%%%%%%

%SYSTEM-S-NORMAL, normal successful completion
-SYSTEM-S-NORMAL, normal successful completion


%%%%%%%%%%%% 11-JUN-2007 12:52:50.59 %%%%%%%%%%%%

%TCPIP-E-LPD_FILERROR, file error td_fA210pd01_minlnv_agro.nl
-RMS-F-IFI, invalid internal file identifier (IFI) value


%%%%%%%%%%%% 11-JUN-2007 13:45:53.64 %%%%%%%%%%%%

%TCPIP-F-LPD_BADPORT, error getting a port
-TCPIP-E-EAI_NONAME, unknown name or service

[Heinz W Genhart]

Hi Camiel

I compared your Logfile output with a logfile output of on of our LPD Printers.
The only difference I can see is the following:


RM: pd0013s.******.****.nl
RP: MFCWAG200170

Should be:

RM: MFCWAG200170.******.****.nl
RP: MFCWAG200170.******.****.nl

Change RM: to your printers name

Hope that helps

Geni

[Camiel]

Hello Heinz,

Thanks for looking into it, but the difference you noticed is due to the way the printers are setup. Instead of printing directly to the printers, we print to a printserver (the pd0013s) that does various things to the job's formatting (adds some lines and standard texts, adds codes for an enveloping machine). Therefore, the remote host name differs from the printer name.

Camiel.

[Ian Miller.]

check which processes have the TCPIP$LPD_ROOT:[000000]MFCWAG200170.LOG file open with SHOW DEVICES/FILES.

I have seen weirdness with multiple symbionts writing to the same log file.

Additional information can be obtained by enabling more debugging options.

See
http://ftp.openvms.compaq.com/doc/83final/6526/6526pro_055.html

[Camiel]

Thanks, Ian. The symbionts were all writing properly to their own log file.

The problem was solved by someone else, it was found out to be at the Windows machine at the other end (the printserver). They'd tried stopping and starting services, which didn't solve the problem, but a complete reboot did the trick.

I'm sorry to have bothered everyone with a problem that had nothing to do with OpenVMS.

Thanks for all the help!

Camiel.

[Camiel]

Oh, by the way, the windows-people fixed this permanently... they scheduled a daily reboot of the machine... Can anyone imagine having to do that on OpenVMS?

[Wim Van den Wyngaert]

Every day, we do a stop/que/reset and a stop/id for all (empty) LPD queues/symbionts. Just to avoid having to search for too many LPD problems. Idem for a faxstar LPD queue (but every hour or so).

A lot less problems with the 9100 symbionts.

Wim

[Ian Miller.]

My experience with printing via windows systems is generally that when there is a problem its most likely fixed by rebooting the windows server. If its not that then its the network. Only after that consider there may be something amiss with the VMS system.