SUMMARY: NeWSprint - SPARCprinter problems

From: ekrell@ulysses.att.com
Date: Mon Apr 22 1991 - 18:09:23 CDT


A week ago I asked for help with NeWSprint and a new SPARCprinter
installed on a SPARCstation 2 running 4.1.1:

   When I run a PostScript file though lpr, I would get anywhere from
   0 to 6-7 pages printed and then it will stop. When I run ps on
   the SS2, I can see np_filter and xnews still running but the
   engine_ctl_SPARCprinter process has died.

Others reported similar problems. Some people suggested I needed
a lot of disk space in the /var/spool partition (where NeWSprint
does the image rendering). This is true but I had enough space.
Others suggested to check permissions on /dev/console. I had already
taken care of that and of commenting out everything in /etc/fbtab.

Lew Yobs and Brian Smith pointed to the cause of my problem:
The spool directory was NFS-mounted. This causes NeWSprint to
go bezerk. After further experimentation, I found out that it
wasn't the spool directory but the directory specified by CANVASDIR
in the .param file installed by NeWSprint in the spool directory.
The default is for CANVASDIR to be the same as the spool directory.
This is where NeWSprint creates the bitmap files that are sent to
the SPARCprinter. For some reason, when this directory is on an NFS
file system, it doesn't work.

I was told to install the NFS jumbo patch for 4.1.1; I did that but
it didn't make a difference. I ended up changing CANVASDIR to be
on the local disk while leaving the spool directory on the NFS file
system. I also wrote a C program to act as the spooler instead of
using the NeWSprint "pl" filter and all the shell scripts that
are run.

I can now realiably print long jobs without any problems.

Thanks to:

ral@hydra.Jpl.Nasa.Gov (Roger Lighty)
quinn@ee-cf.stanford.edu (Christine A. Quinn)
ho@la.tis.com (Hilarie K. Orman)
rgb@lamont.ldgo.columbia.edu (Bob Bookbinder)
Lew.Yobs@Corp.Sun.COM (Lew Yobs)
lsu@lulea.telesoft.se (Lennart Sundstr|m)
jan@eik.ii.uib.no
zjat02@trc.amoco.com (Jon A. Tankersley)
bisc@zellweger.ch (Thomas K Bischoff)
brsmith@cs.umn.edu (Brian R. Smith)

Eduardo Krell AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill, NJ

UUCP: {att,decvax,ucbvax}!ulysses!ekrell Internet: ekrell@ulysses.att.com



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