Print queue status Running, queue is stuck

[jjSAP]

All,

We are running on AIX 4.3.3 and have 100+ remote printers on our network defined to our AIX servers. These printers are HP and have HPjetDirect cards in them. The problem is, that periodically, the AIX queues freeze up in that when you do an lpstat on them they say RUNNING and have the first job listed at 100% and then have a bunch of prints queued up behind them.

I can free up the queue most of the time by stopping the queue and canceling the first job and restarting the queue. This is becoming a real pain as it happens to some printer somewhere every day. The only thing that I can find is that often the printers in this state have either experienced a jam, run out of paper, are in power save or were turned off.

It's almost as though printer status is not being communicated back and forth and when the printer problem is cleared up, the print queue is still hung up.

Has anyone experienced this problem and if so, how did you resolve it?

Thanks,

JJ

 

[baanman]

Hi JJ,
We are on Aix 5.2 and using remote printers.
We are facing the same problem as yours. The only way to solve this problem I use is to cancel the firts job in the queue.
But this problem do not occur very offen in our system.
Our queues are faaling in DOWN status and I need to enable it every time. I increased the timeout duration of the queues to 45 minutes, now they are falling in down status more rarely but they still doing.

Baanman

 

[jjSAP]

I've seen others with the same problem as well and it seems that no one has an answer. It seems to me that it has to do with status messages not getting passed back and forth between AIX and HP printers. If the printers run out of paper or jam or some other event that temporarily takes it offline, then this problem occurs.

I also am currently correcting the problem with the same method as you.... disabling the queue, canceling the first job and enabling the queue. But.... this is only a bandaid and is a pain. I would like to get to the root of the problem and fix it. I think that it may possibly be related to a timeout issue when an event causes the printer to go offline and there is no response to the queue as to the status of the printer. But this is only a theory. I am going to have to play with a printer to see if I can reproduce the error and then play with settings to see if I can get a solution.

Regards,

JJ

 

[Yegolev]

i suspect that there might be a msg sent, however there is no resend if there is no reply. if you have bandwith issues perhaps you can solve them but in general i think we all spend time putting band-aids on print queues. this includes setup of monitors and scripts to restart queues.

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