printer stalled

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From: "Helene D." <hkd2000@no-spam-bcpl.net>
Subject: Re: Help: Printer Stalled by Cancelled Job
References: <lTYe7.53699$TW.274409@tor-nn1.netcom.ca> 
Date: Sat, 18 Aug 2001 02:11:20 -0400

JP wrote:

> We have a printer serving both SCO UNIX 5.0.5 and a Windows NT Server.
> Windows and UNIX both print to the same phyical printer directly.
>
> At the time the printer was busy with a job from Windows, a UNIX user sent
> her print job. The UNIX print job was stalled and the user then cancelled
> the job from the UNIX application. When the printer became available, the
> cancelled job was still showing on the UNIX print queue.
>
> Since then, any subsequent UNIX job sent to that printer could not go
> through. lpstat showed the first job as cancelled, but there were still a
> lot of jobs waiting to be sent to the printer.  We could not get rid of the
> stalled job from the queue. I then noted the job number 83775 and cleared
> the following files:
>
> 1. /usr/spool/lp/requests/83775
> 2. /var/spool/lp/temp/83775
> 3. /var/spool/lp/temp/83775-0
> 4. /var/spool/lp/temp/83775-1
>
> However, when I ran lpstat again, the cancelled job was still showing and
> all other jobs could not go through. I tried disabled and enabled the
> printer but nothing changed.
>
> How can I clear the cancelled job completely and make the printer work
> again? What could have caused the problem? Can any expert please give me an
> advice.
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Cheers

You might have a hung lp process on SCO.  Shutdown the spooler, find
the hung process, then kill-9 it, and restart the spooler.
   lpshut   (and wait a few seconds afterwards)
   ps -ef | grep -i lp   (if there is an lp process for the target printer,
note it's
                                pid number)
   kill -9 <pid number>
   lpsched

What is your printer model?  If it's an HP laserjet with multiple active
interfaces (serial/parallel/network), you may need to increase it's
TIMEOUT value.  The default of 15 seconds may too short for the
printer to effectively switch between print requests coming on
different interfaces.

Hope this helps,
-Helene D.

Macworld Mac Security Superguide $9.99

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