A.P. Lawrence

Best of the Newsgroups: lpr lpd printserver fails

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From: Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us>
Subject: Re: LPD Printer Problem - syslog going nuts Message-ID: <1ff5a0hgr51r3k2hpb1h8j6jb64l4gbs6g@4ax.com> References: <72df541a.0405111532.67f17a9c@posting.google.com>
Date: Thu, 13 May 2004 00:31:31 GMT

On 11 May 2004 16:32:20 -0700, unixfox@yahoo.com (unixfox) wrote:

>I am running SCO 5.0.6 with supplements and oss650a installed.
>
>I tried installing a new laser printer using rlpconf.

Is there some reason why you did not bother to disclose the make and
model of your printer or print server?

>Everything went
>smooth until I tried to print to the printer. No output at all and the
>print jobs stay in the spool directory /usr/spool/lpd/xeroxdc2.

Unix and Linux Support

Well, do you have connectivity?  Can you ping the print server?

What happens when you run:
  rlpstat printer_name
If it hangs, you don't have connectivity.

Does the print server have a fixed IP address or are you using DHCP to
assign the IP address?  If DHCP, you can't guarantee that you'll get
the same IP address every time you restart the print server (unless
you have "static DHCP" feature in whatever you're using for a DHCP
server.

Any chance you have two DHCP servers?  That's always fun to deal with.

>I installed the oss650a patch hoping this would help but
>to no avail. I looked at the /usr/adm/syslog nad it had grown to an
>enormous
>size and I mean HUGE, like 8 Gb very quick with these messages:

Maximum file size is 2GB.  Wanna read the numbers again?

>May 11 19:42:14 sg0896 lpd[769]: xeroxdc2: lost connection
>May 11 19:42:14 sg0896 lpd[769]: restarting xeroxdc2
>May 11 19:42:14 sg0896 lpd[769]: xeroxdc2: lost connection
>May 11 19:42:14 sg0896 lpd[769]: restarting xeroxdc2

Well, yeah.  That's what it does if it tries to print to a device
that's not available or connected.  It usually says something like
"last message repeated xxx times".  I dunno why it's repeating the
same message.

>I have other printers EXACTLY like this on the network printing with
>no problem.

Are they configured EXACTLY the same?  I find it difficult to check my
own work and often find it benificial to have someone double check my
settings.  Inspect /etc/printcap (again) and also check the settings.

>I have looked at the printcap file,

Could you look again and see if you perhaps have duplicated an IP
address or duplicated the IP address of a workstation on your LAN?
Turn off the print server in question and see if you can still ping
it.  With static IP's, it's amazingly common.

>restarted lpd.
>rebooted, tried
>to rename the printer, delete it and start over but nothing seems to
>help.

Anything useful from:
  rlpstat printer_name
  lpstat -t

>I can ping the printer with no problem,(it resolves byname)and I can
>print from a Windoze machine with no problem.

It might be interesting to see what you put in the unspecified print
server configuration for the default gateway.  After setting up far
too many workstations, and automagically setting the default gateway
to the company router IP, I sometime accidentally do that for
printers.  Bad idea as it will sent replies to the internet instead of
the source.  I suggest 0.0.0.0 or the IP address of the print server.

Incidentally, it's problems like this that make me use "netcat"
instead of LPR/LPD and HPNP.

Light reading:
  http://www.aplawrence.com/Unixart/netprint.html
  http://aplawrence.com/SCOFAQ/scotec7.html#getnetcat
  http://www.aplawrence.com/KevinSmith/netcat/
  http://www.aplawrence.com/Jeffl/printports.html
-- 
# Jeff Liebermann   150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831.336.2558 voice    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
#                           jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
# 831.421.6491 digital_pager  jeffl@cruzio.com     AE6KS

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