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Printing problems with RH 5.2 & lpr/lpd




Anyone besides me realize that Berkley lpr/lpd really, really bites?

I really like RedHat's print-tool that set's up the printers real nice.
But if most of your printers are networked printers, and you have a bunch
of them, problems start showing up.

We are spending about 20% of our time tracking down stupid printer
problems lately.  Not all are linux related, but way too many of them ARE!

Two problems with have with RedHat's lpr/lpd:

1) when you first start up lpr/lpd, and one of your network printers is
down (Jetdirect is unplugged, or other system hasn't been booted yet),
lpr/lpd waits, and waits, and waits, before ANY printing happens.
Essentally, one bad printer/system in your network can stop all printing.

2) It's latest favorite thing to do is just to choose to stop printing to
a network printer.  I also notice at the time that if I do a "lpq -Pp9"
all the print jobs for the printer are reported to have "0 bytes" which I
know is not true.  I shutdown lpd, remove all the jobs, start it back
again, and all is well.  But we lost those jobs!!  (people get REAL cranky
about this!!)


Does anyone out there use something like LPRng?  I noticed that Caldera
OpenLinux 2.2 uses LPRng.  I tried installing the LPRng contrib rpm on my
RedHat 6.0 laptop, but it doesn't fit in with RedHat's print filters that
I like.  :(

Anyone out there with ideas where to go with this?  Anyone else with
similair problems?

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Tom Cross                     Voice: 320-253-1020    FAX: 320-253-6956
System Administrator                          E-mail: tomc@kendeco.com
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