Networked Printer Problems

[Wiltse Carpenter]

In article <BENEDICT.90Dec5084648 at chaos.utexas.edu> benedict at chaos.utexas.edu (Thomas Benedict) writes:
>We've had some trouble with our printers ever since the upgrade to
>Irix 3.3.1. ...  Ever since that time two of the
>three still recognize it, but the third won't.  Now it gets weird...

Assuming you are not using the BSD lp spooling system:

Routine error message from the lp spooler are logged in /usr/spool/lp/log;
fatal messages are also sent to /usr/adm/SYSLOG.  Look in those places for
any obvious problems.

>
>Then I got smart.  Remove all the printers and reload them anew.  So I
>tried to delete the printer.  Error message... "Try this command
>later."  No dice.

I can't find any error message like this anywhere.  What exactly does the
message say?

>...  Does
>anyone know what I'm doing wrong, or what might cause this?

Here are the things I would investigate:

1. Is there something wrong with the permissions in /usr/spool/lp?  If you
   run /usr/lib/lpshut and then /usr/lib/lpsched, many things will be
   corrected automatically.  However, you can check to make sure that
   everything is owned by user ``lp'' or compare it with your known good
   system.

2. Is there is a rogue lock file left in /usr/spool/lp?  Shut the scheduler
   down with /usr/lib/lpshut and then check for files of the form *LOCK
   and remove any that are found.

3. Is there is a problem with connecting to the remote host?  The network
   printing scheme used on SGI machines uses rsh(1) to connect to the
   remote machine.  It is usually necessary to run addclient(1) on the
   machine with the printer before it will accept connections from clients.

	-Wiltse Carpenter