Win'95 printer lock-ups & filters

[Johan Meiring]

HI,

The problem is that HP Jetdirect boxes/cards can not give back information
on the print queue, while receiving a job.  The lpq command on the UNIX
server then 'hangs' while trying to retrieve this info.  The W95
workstation then 'hangs' while waiting for this info.

This has always been a problem with HP Jetdirect cards, they seem to be not
'multithreaded' and can only do one TCP/IP job at a time.

Suggestion 1:  Maybe samba could be altered to not wait for lpq to
complete, and pass back blank queue info to the Workstation while it waits
for lpq to complete.

Suggestion 2:  As this problem with HP Jetdirect cards do not exist with
the DLC protocol, maybe someone could write a DLC spooler for UNIX/Linux
:-)

Johan Meiring

>Printer lock-ups:
>I have some printer shares available on my Samba server (RedHat Linux
>kernel 2.0.32, Samba 1.9.18p3) and they are working just fine in most
>cases, but from time to time the Win '95 client will either lock up while
>printing or send a print job samba & lpd don't like and it will completely
>hose the printer, to the point where I have to clear the queue and
>sometimes physically reset the print server attached to the printer.  I
>can't even telnet to the print server when this happens.  Most of the
>printers are HP LaserJet 4's & 6's connected via external or internal
>JetDirect print servers.  What is unclear to me is why this is happening.
>I suspect Win '95 is the culprit and if this is just SOP while running
>networked printers I'll live with it, but I want to make sure I haven't
>missed anything.
>
[cut]
>
>Thanks in advance for any advice.
>
>Eric Sisler
>esisler at ares.csd.net