Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!samsung!uunet!panews!!keith
From: keith@ibmpa.awdpa.ibm.com
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next
Subject: Re: Weird printer daemon bug
Message-ID: <1990Aug31.202627.11876@panews>
Date: 31 Aug 90 20:26:27 GMT
References: <6911@milton.u.washington.edu>
Sender: news@panews (news id)
Reply-To: keith@ibmpa.UUCP (Keith Mason)
Organization: IBM AWD Development, Palo Alto
Lines: 31

In article <6911@milton.u.washington.edu> markad@blake.acs.washington.edu (Mark Donnell) writes:
>Help! We have a NeXT printer on one of our NeXTs. It is shared to
>a number of NeXTs and Suns. We have a serious and consistently 
>recurring problem in that whenever there is a job in the print
>queue and a user logs out of the console, the daemon swaps out -
>dead - like the bug that was hit by 'raid'. It doesn't matter if
>print job came from the user at the console or another user rlogged
>in or from a remote machine using the '-P' flag from the command line.
>The only way to fix it is to kill and restart the print daemon.
>But, since it is liable to die again in the next 4-5 hours, we usually
>just go to another printer, which is a waste of a perfectly good printer.
>Anyone seen anything like this? Any suggestions?

I assume you mean, when you log out of the console on the NeXT?  If so,
does the NeXT put up a window containing something about "malformed
PostScript"?

If you answered yes to both of the above questions,  then yes I know of
the bug.  We here at IBM don't know what causes it, but a quick cure would
be to kill npd (look in the console log; it puts errors from "npd[###]:"
where ### is the process, or use "ps")  then just restart it with 
"/usr/lib/NextPrinter/npd".  You will then be able to print again, and
this "fix" only takes thirty seconds and the root password.  How often do
you log out of the console, anyway?

However... if anyone knows how to really *fix* this...  POST IT!

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Keith Mason  ...!uunet!ibmsupt.uucp!keith
NOT a registered developer!
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