lp waits and waits and waits... (and a VP/ix bitch)

[Paul De Bra]

In article <8589 at dasys1.UUCP> tbetz at dasys1.UUCP (Tom Betz) writes:
>Finally got Xenix up and running on the 3216 (after Wyse installed a new
>motherboard and daughterboard, as well as the latest rev WD controller 
>chip) and even VP/ix is working (after a fashion... except that it refuses 
>to recognize the letter 'w' typed on a terminal - anyone have any ideas 
>why?) ... but even though it used to work (before the original daughterboard
>failed) lp now refuses to send anything to the printer!  I can cat stuff 
>directly to /dev/tty2a (to which lp has been directed to send stuff) but
>if I pipe the same stuff to lp, lp just keeps queing requests up and 
>holding them.

I've been bitten by this one many times. (Yes, I've unfortunately had to
reinstall my system many times after hardware failures and replacements,
and also every time I wanted to change the size of my dos-partition.)

There are problems with the lpinit (or mkdev lp) procedures if you don't
start with a "blank" system. Assuming you had a working system, made a backup,
reinstalled xenix and then restored your backup on top of it. Several
approaches seem to work:

1) make sure the device is owned by lp.

2) perform lpinit BEFORE you restore your own backup. restoring your backup
   first may confuse lpinit, because you already create some (but usually
   not all) the files it wants to create itself.

3) if you didn't perform lpinit before resotring your backup, remove the
   lpr package using "custom". then remove all files in /usr/spool/lp that
   "custom" forgot to remove:-(, then reinstall the lpr package using
   "custom", and finally try lpinit again.

An easy way to find out if your lpinit installation went allright is to
call "custom" and see what it tells you about the LPR package. If custom
tells you that LPR is only partially installed, go to step 3) of my
guidelines above.

Paul.
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