Problems with LAT printers...

[Leonard Peirce]

In article <1991Jan28.182034.7512 at gumby.cc.wmich.edu> I wrote:
>In article <1991Jan22.164300.12034 at ucunix.san.uc.edu> Don.Rainwater at UC.Edu writes:
>>	We're having some trouble with LAT printers under Ultrix 4.1.
>>The jobs seem to print out okay, but then Ultrix doesn't let go of the
>>port (SHOW SESSIONS PORT 1 on the DECserver says that the port is still
>>connected to the Ultrix system).  The next time a job is submitted to
>>that printer queue, Ultrix thinks that the port is busy and marks the
>>queue as stalled.
>> [...]
>>	Has anyone else experienced this?
>
>I have.

Well, I seem to have to made a little progress in solving this, although things
aren't exactly the way they should be.

Basically what I did was specify the server and port when starting lcp in rc.local
instead of putting them in the printcap entry.  Things don't hang anymore but for
some reason I keep getting errors in the log file about not being able to open the
device.  I have also noticed that *sometimes* when a job is pending, lpd won't start
up.

I say sometimes because I was testing this repeatedly the other day and it
would work perfectly about 90% of the time and the other 10% I would lpr a file
and lpd would just sit there.  The port was free; lpd just ignored the file.
After I would restart lpd, things would be fine.

I thought I was losing my mind for a while so I kept trying it and kept getting
the same results.  I decided to let it go for a while and see if anyone complains
and I haven't heard a word from anyone.  Hmmm....

So...

I have the printer in my office working again so I'm going to test this some more.
Maybe I was losing my mind (temporarily).....

At least the port doesn't hang up and our VMS users don't scream because they
can't get things printed.

If I only had source....:-)
--
Leonard Peirce                  Internet:  peirce at gumby.cc.wmich.edu
Western Michigan University                peirce at gw.wmich.edu
Academic Computing Services     UUCP:      ...!uunet!sharkey!wmichgw!peirce
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