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From: ren%lbl-ux4@LBL.ARPA
Newsgroups: comp.laser-printers
Subject: (none)
Message-ID: <8709211702.AA14697@brillig.umd.edu>
Date: Thu, 17-Sep-87 12:24:11 EDT
Article-I.D.: brillig.8709211702.AA14697
Posted: Thu Sep 17 12:24:11 1987
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Approved: laser-lovers@brillig.umd.edu

Subject: Need help with stuck LaserWriter

 
>Our Sun 3/50 computer is connected to an Apple LaserWriter.  About three
>weeks ago, things started to get flakey.  The Transcript processes
>running pscomm get stuck.  Killing the stuck processes and restarting
>the lpd daemon usually results in another pair of stuck pscomm processes.

We also experienced this problem at our site under TranScript V2.0.
I took the same action as you did except I removed the offending job
from the spool queue before restarting the lpd daemon.  This always
got us into the clear until another such job arrived in the spool
queue.  I copied two of the offending job df... files from the queue
before removing the jobs.  In the interim, I received the TranScript
V2.1 Beta Release tape and installed on one of our systems.  The new
V2.1 pscomm appears to handle problem job files ok as processing the
previous two offending jobs under V2.1 did not hang the printer though
the only output produced was the job header page.  The log file comments
were similar.  The two offending job files were both generated by
Ventura Publisher on an IBM system.  Examining the postscript job files
I found embedded Quick Draw commands.  As an experiment I pre-appended
a laserprep.ps file to the job postscript files and than queued the jobs
for printing.  Both jobs printed ok producing the correct output.  As a
circumvention we wrote a small shell script that does this automatically
for our Ventura users.  Until a real fix is implemented somewhere along
the line our Ventura users are at least getting their printer output.


Bob Rendler			(415) 486-5629
Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory	rerendler@lbl.arpa
One Cyclotron Road
MS50B-2239
Berkeley, Ca 94720