RE: [TCLUG:7538] printing (lpr/lpd?) problems

["Carl Patten" <cpatte@trimodalinc.com>]

<much snippage follows>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom [mailto:carls@agritech.com]
>
>         ok. tried printing with "| lpr -P hp4v 2>/dev/null"; no change.
> still jams in the print spool (although the file size that lpq reports is
> now 2700 bytes, rather than 2731 bytes)

Weird.  Can't explain the file size difference.   You might want to print it
both ways and do a 'diff' on them to see what changed.  As long as they are
in the print queue you can examine the raw data in the
/var/spool/lpd/[printername] directory.

>         tried printing to a file; and it would happily write to
> '/tmp/r.txt', tho. the *intersting* thing, was that this file would not
> print either! if I lpr'ed it, it would jam up the print spool.
>         so i opened the file with PICO, and there's some funky '^L'
> character at the end. if i removed the '^L' char, the file prints
> just fine!
>         perhaps it has something to do with the (formatting) escape codes
> that OSAS sends to the printer. (to get compressed text,
> landscaping, etc).

Sounds like you're _very_ close to an answer.  ^L is a page eject character.
Can this be turned off in OSAS?  Are there any other PCL printer commands
embedded in the report file?

> >Incidentally, your vendor may be assuming that the "-s" option
> to lpr makes
> >it print silently.  This is true under SCO Unix but NOT true
> under RH Linux.
>         i already tried removing it, and no luck there.

Oh well, it's still a good idea to leave it off.

> - Error
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
>   WARNING! - Unexpected Error Has Occurred.
>
>   BASIC ERROR = 49  HOST ERROR=-32  LINE = 3820  PROGRAM = GLPRJ
>            >
>   3820 CALL "GENOUT.PUB",DEVICE$,F,OUTCOLS
>
>   BBx ERR 49 = STBL Error
>
>   Host ERR means UNIX operating system reported an error 32.
>
>   Base Workspace Program = GLPRJ
>
>   Press Shft F3  for support information.
>
>   Press Enter to Continue.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------
> -----------
> ^this is actually the one i got from trying to print to a file. i
> don't have
> a printer physically connected to it anymore to try printing to.
> i'm not looking for a specific interpretation of this; just
> throwing it out
> to see if anyone understands any part of it.
>

Error 32 in Unix is a "broken pipe".  It looks like OSAS captured the system
error and reported it.  Broken pipes happen when a program tries to pipe
STDOUT somewhere but fails, either because the destination is invalid or
because a program aborted.

You've got a great start on fixing this.  Let us know how it goes!

--
Carl Patten
Systems Administrator
Trimodal Inc.