AIX

I have some servers using HPJetDirect on AIX for printing, the printers were on the clients WAN and everything in garden was rosy.

Recently due to various mergers and reorganisations the actual printers have been moved behind some firewalls.

The problem we are seeing is that the printer device and AIX appear to disagree on their status. We get a situation where the print queue on AIX is RUNNING with a document and the printer itself is idle. I have found that if you disable the queue, cancel the first request and then re-enable the queue the printer bursts into life and the queue is cleared.

We did see this problem every now and again (like once every 3 to 6 months); but it is happening every day now and the client is getting annoyed about it as it will hold up production when it occurs.

I have done some searches on the Internet (both generally and specifically on the IBM site) without any hits, has anybody else seen a problem like this and more importantly have a resolution?

Cheers,
Bryan.

I dont know of any ready-made remedy but obviously the firewall is blocking some traffic between the printer(s) and the queue-managing host, yes?

If so, you might be able to work something out with the firewall people by introducing a rule for the printer(s). Start with the classic port 515 (lpd) and maybe use some network monitor to find additional ports which must be unblocked to make the queue communication work again. All in all this looks like an extended practice session with tcpdump - good luck.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

Thanks bakunin, we have already set the firewalls (HP JetDirect uses 9100) for the printers. The interesting point is that it works most of the time, it is only every now and agian that the queue hangs up.