[Info-vax] [Urgent] OpenVMS v 6.2 and printing issue

[Stephen Hoffman]

On 2013-01-31 16:00:24 +0000, guillaume.falarz at linamar.com said:

> We have 2 printers connected to a DecServer 900TM with our Alpha Server.
> During 3 weeks, we couldn't print more than 3 or 4 documents in the 
> same time.  We called our hardware helpdesk and they changed DecServer 
> and DecXM. That worked during one week but now printing is down.
> When we print a document, it's in the job queue and the status is 
> "printing". But, after 1 or 2 sec, the job disappeared in the job 
> queue, the document is not print and printers status is "stop" and 
> autostart is "inactive".
> We have no error.
> 
> Does a incremental file blocked printing job?

OpenVMS doesn't have a concept of an incremental file.  The print queue 
on OpenVMS is a true queue.  Jobs wait until the earlier jobs in the 
queue finish, and the next job is then dequeued and printed.  This 
repeats until the queue is empty.

> Could you help me ?

I've seen jobs drop like this when the cable was bad, and when the 
printer was disconnected, powered down, or otherwise malfunctioning.  
But as for general help here in the newsgroup, probably not.  Not 
without some idea of the queue set up and the DECserver configuration, 
of the local wiring and the network connection, of the printer, and 
some idea of whether both the DECserver and the printer are even 
working correctly.  These cases usually require looking at some logs 
and running some tests with the printers, checking some parts, and 
potentially swapping some parts with known-good parts.

Put another way, there are a number of reasons why printing in a 
configuration such as this can fail, and the trigger is quite often 
somewhat arcane and not visible to an end-user of the system.

It'll be most effective to ask the hardware help desk for help with 
this problem again.  This given that something apparently either lost 
its settings, or got changed, or is failing, and the help desk is in 
the best position to figure that out, particularly in your 
configuration.

Depending on what sorts of files you're printing, it may be expedient 
to replace both the DECserver device and the printer with a 
network-attached printer.  You'd probably need one with printer-based 
Postscript, or decent support for lpr/lpd or telnet printing.  Whether 
the data in the files you're printing might print correctly on a 
replacement printer would also require some investigation, though.


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