Jet Direct Cards and Print sharing

[Peter Samuelson]

[John Kuhn <webmaster at mickalich.com>]
> I have a Samba server running on Redhat 6.2 it runs perfect as a file
> server to about 30 NT4/windows2000 computers.  It is also a Print
> server connected to 3 plotters and a laser printer (all Jet Direct
> connected) works great there also except for one thing.. when the
> plotters are currently busy receiving a plot and someone tries to
> plot something elese there windows will hang until the plotter has a
> chance to respond to the send.

While JetDirect cards and boxes (at least in my experience) can only
accept one TCP/IP connection at a time, either your Unix server or your
client machines' NT boxes should be able to queue print requests.

You will need to send some more information about your setup.  What
print subsystem are you using?  Debian Linux has at least three to
choose from (lpd, lprng, cups).  How is it configured?

One idea I have is that your NT box is querying for printer status, and
this causes your Linux server to query JetDirect, which like I said
can't handle multiple simultaneous TCP connections.  If that is the
case, you may be able to convince your printing subsystem not to do
that.  I had exactly this problem with JetDirect vs. AIX a couple years
ago, back before I ditched the AIX printing system in favor of LPRng.

Peter