Printers disappearing

[Magnus Svavarsson]

Hi

The problem with dissappearing printers is an old one.  I made some
posting way back when I had struggled with this problem, and solved it. 

The problem is in printing.c, in the function parse_lpq_entry().  It does
return LPSTAT_ERROR in some cases.  This makes NT drop the printer, and I
guess that is the same thing happening with win95.  The quick "fix" is
to return LPSTAT_STOPPED instead of LPSTAT_ERROR.  I am not quite aware of
the meaning of it, though.  Can anyone explain this?

The problem occurs of the string "error" (and a few others, as I remember)
is a part of the lpq output.  If you check the ftp address below, you can
see my changes to the stat1_strings variable.  I can not remember what
influence this had, exectly.  (I have not had problems for over a year...)
I do not believe that those changes ever made it to the source.  I have
some other changes in the distribution printing.c, but I do not believe
that they address this specific problem.  IT is only for the "lprng"
support.

The fix I have been using for the last year or so is this:

In smb.conf:
        lpq command = /dist/bin/lpq.smb -P%p

 cat /dist/bin/lpq.smb 
#!/bin/sh
/coll/local/bin/lpq $* |\
 /bin/egrep -v "error|zero length control file" |\
 awk '{print substr($0,1,65)" "substr($0,66)}' |\
 sed 's,/var/spool/pcnfs/\([^/]*\)/,/var/spool/pcnfs/\1:,' 
 
It is the egrep -v that fixes the dissappearing printers problem. 

You can see my patch (old!) at
ftp://ftp.hum.auc.dk/pub/Magnus_Svavarsson/Samba

I hope this can help.

/Magnus

----------------------
Magnus Svavarsson
Network Administrator
Faculty of Humanities
Aalborg University