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HP 9000 Networking: NetWare 4.1/9000 Print Services > Appendix D Troubleshooting Printing Problems
Troubleshooting Notes |
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Print jobs can be generated in a variety of printer languages. See "Printer Languages" in Appendix A for a discussion of the various types. Different applications with printing capability will generate print jobs using different languages. Similarly, certain printers support some languages but not others. For example, many PCL printers do not support PostScript printing. (See Note 2 for more information.) To be sure you are sending your print job to a printer that can support the language used by your application, you must determine the language used by your print job. Sending a print job to a printer that does not support the printer language used in that print job will produce unexpected results varying from no printer output to incorrect printer output. In Windows and DOS applications, the print driver you are using in a specific application can provide information about the type of job the application creates when the document is printed. The name of the print driver can be seen in many applications by choosing the "Select Printer" option from the file menu.
If your application does not allow you to select a print driver, it generates an ASCII text print job. In DOS, copying or redirecting a text file to an LPT port "prints" an ASCII text job. For example, TYPE <filename> LPT1 or DIR > LPT1. A large family of printer languages, the "page description languages" (PDLs), including PostScript, do not support printing this type of job. However, ASCII text files can be printed by non-PDL languages such as PCL. The language of a print job can also be determined by examining the print job data. However, an understanding of the characteristics of printer languages is necessary in order to determine the language type. See Note 5 for information on examining print job data. The printer languages your printer supports can be determined by reading your printer's documentation. Many printers can support multiple languages. For example, many printers now support both PCL and PostScript print jobs. Commands can be sent to these printers to cause them to switch languages. For example, to print a PostScript job on a printer that supports both PostScript and PCL jobs, a command sequence may need to be sent with the job that tells the printer to "SwitchToPostScript." This command sequence can be referenced in a print job configuration and implemented by using the J= option with CAPTURE or NPRINT using the following syntax:
or
Some printers can detect the language used by a print job and switch to the appropriate language automatically. A printer will not function with NetWare print services if it does not function without NetWare print services. To determine whether your printer is functioning properly, first print the job to the printer locally. If the printer is connected to a server, issue the server DOWN command and bring the machine up as a workstation so you can print the job to a local printer. This will determine whether the problem exists within network printing. Check for the following problems: During printing, the printer must have sufficient memory to hold the entire page to be printed. If it does not, it will print the part of the page it has in memory and continue printing on the next page. This problem occurs when printing large graphics jobs.
If unexpected strings or characters appear in your printer output, and you are sure that the printer language in your print job is the same as the language supported by your printer (see Notes 1 and 2), you may have different language versions. If the language version used by the print driver in your application is newer than the version your printer can interpret, some commands may not be recognized by your printer. This can cause unexpected strings or characters to appear randomly throughout your print job. Try using an older language version to create your job. For example, if this symptom occurs while printing to an HP LaserJet IIIsi and the print driver you are using is for an HP LaserJet 4si, try using a printer driver for an HP LaserJet IIIsi. If your print job is printing slowly, you may have an interrupt conflict between the port and another device. Reconfigure your printer to run in polled mode. Polled mode is the default in NetWare Services software. If printing performance improves, either continue using polled mode or configure your printer to use a unique interrupt. See "Polled versus Interrupt Mode" in Appendix C for more information. If random, unexpected characters appear in your printer output, your printer cables may be too long or improperly attached. Make sure that everything is connected properly and that the cabling is within specified lengths and in good condition. For more information on cabling, see Appendix B, "Cabling Printers." Run the configuration program supplied with the printer, or use DOS commands like MODE or PRINT to check that the printer settings are accurate. For example, if the printer is cabled to LPT2, make sure to send print jobs to LPT2. Use the documentation supplied with the printer to check other necessary settings. If you cannot get a printer cabled to a workstation to print locally, check the workstation's NET.CFG file to see if it contains the following line:
If NET.CFG contains this line, temporarily remark it so it is not executed (place a pound sign # in front of it) or change the line to read as follows:
(The number should be the number of printers attached to the machine). Print jobs that are not ASCII text files should be printed as "Byte Stream" files. ASCII text files may be printed as "Text" files. The difference between these two types is whether tab conversion is enabled. Tab conversion means that as a job is printed, a tab character is replaced by a specified number of spaces. Tab conversion takes place if "File contents" is set to "Text" in the print job configuration or if "Tabs" is set in the CAPTURE command. If the jobs to be printed are ASCII text files, the "File contents" should be set to "Text." "Tab size" can then be set to 1 through 18. This is the number of spaces that will be substituted for each full tab that is encountered. This is set in the CAPTURE command using the T= parameter. For example, to set the tab conversion to 6 spaces, the command is as follows:
Any job that is not an ASCII text file should be printed with "File contents" set to "Byte Stream." This is because tab conversion usually causes graphics to be printed incorrectly. Text from most word processors is printed as graphics. "Byte Stream" is the default setting. It can be manually set in the CAPTURE command using the NT (No Tabs) parameter. The command is as follow:
To determine if a file is an ASCII text file, the DOS TYPE command can be used to look at it. For example, the syntax for checking the AUTOEXEC.BAT file is as follows:
If the file can be read properly when it is displayed, it is probably an ASCII text file. Another way to determine this is to try printing the file. If the file contains tabs, yet prints out legibly and in the proper format, it is an ASCII text file. If you have determined that the job is text, yet it will not print properly with "File contents: Text" (or T=<1 through 18> in the CAPTURE command), change the setting to "File contents: Byte Stream" (or NT in the CAPTURE command.) Your print job may contain incorrect functions or control sequences. The following procedure explains how to view the contents of your job using PCONSOLE. Use a text editor to view the print job. Procedure
In PCONSOLE, select the queue from the "Print Queues" list and then "Print Jobs." The name of the user who sent the job is in the "Name" column. If the job is not shown here, either it did not reach the queue or was sent to the printer and then removed from the queue. If your print job was sent to the queue but nothing is currently in the queue, you must determine whether the job did not reach the queue or whether it reached the queue and then disappeared without printing. In order to determine this, you must disable the operator flag for the print queue titled "Allow service by current print servers" using PCONSOLE or the NetWare Administrator utility. To access the queue operator flags in PCONSOLE, select the "Status" option from the "Print Queue Information" menu. In the NetWare Administrator utility, the flags are on the "Details" page of the Queue object. Disabling this operator flag essentially puts the queue on hold. Next, print the job again. You can now look to see if the job is in the queue by selecting "Print Jobs" from the "Print Queue Information" menu in PCONSOLE or by selecting the "Job List" page of the Queue object in the NetWare Administrator utility. If the job does not show up here, it never reached the queue. If the job was printed to a captured port, type CAPTURE SH at the command line. The name of the queue being captured to will be shown on the first line. If the job was printed using NPRINT, type NPRINT /D (Details) at the command line. This will show the print job configuration being used. (Note that a slash must precede the "Details" option when using NPRINT. The slash is not necessary when using CAPTURE.) You can determine which printer or queue is specified in this job configuration using PRINTCON or the NetWare Administrator utility. In Windows, you can determine where the job is being sent by opening User Tools and clicking on the printer icon. The printer or queue will be shown next to the port you printed to from the application. The parameters used by CAPTURE and NPRINT are determined by the default print job unless they are overridden in the command. The default print job is configured using PRINTCON or the NetWare Administrator utility. To release jobs on operator or user hold using PCONSOLE, select the queue from the "Print Queues" list and then select "Print Jobs." Select the job that is held and change the "User hold "and "Operator hold" fields to "No." To accomplish the same task using the NetWare Administrator utility, the "User hold" and "Operator hold" fields can be found by selecting "Job Details" in the "Print Queue" dialog. To release jobs on operator or user hold using the NetWare Administrator utility, select "Job List" from the "Print Queue" dialog. Highlight the print job and select "Resume." The only way the print job could have been placed on operator hold is for a print queue operator to have manually placed the job on hold using PCONSOLE or the NetWare Administrator utility. The print job could have been placed on user hold manually by the user or queue operator using PCONSOLE or the NetWare Administrator utility, but also could have been placed on hold automatically. There are several ways a print job can be placed on hold automatically:
If your print job is stuck in "Active" status, one possibility is that the job is being sent slowly. You can usually determine this on a laser printer if the light is blinking to indicate that it is receiving data. If you press the form feed button on the printer, the printer should print part of the page. (Some graphics jobs may be binary files, which require that the / B option be used with CAPTURE.) If you are using a serial printer, some possible causes are as follows:
If you are using a parallel printer, some possible causes are as follows:
Another possibility is that the printer has been paused or is out of paper. This can be determined in PCONSOLE or the print server console screen. If your job is stuck in "Ready" status, the printing configuration may not be complete:
Other possibilities include the following:
One reason for jobs to appear stuck while the status is "Adding" is that the application may be printing slowly. This is likely to happen when the application is generating graphics to be printed. Another possible explanation is that the CAPTURE command includes the options NA (No Autoendcap) and TI=0 (No Timeout). If this is the case, status will remain "Adding" until an End Capture command (CAPTURE EC) is issued. Many applications are not designed for network printing. CAPTURE is a command line utility that allows you to print from applications not designed for NetWare print services. It sets up redirection parameters for printing output from your workstation. The NetWare DOS Requester then redirects the workstation output from an LPT port to the specified network printer or file. For complete information on using CAPTURE, see "Using CAPTURE" in Chapter 4. There are several explanations for slow printing.
In order for a printer to be accessed by the network, ALL of the following must occur:
A print job can be broken and printed on separate pages for several reasons:
To determine the status of your print job using Printer Setup, click on the appropriate print queue icon in the window. Click on "NetWare" and select "Job List." To determine the status of your print job using PCONSOLE, select "Print Jobs" from the "Print Queue Information" menu. Look in the "Status" field for the job. To determine the status of your job using the NetWare Administrator utility, click the "Job List" page in the "Print Queue" dialog and look in the "Status" field. Sometimes printing problems the occur when running Windows can be resolved by any combination of the following, which are set in the "Printers" option in the Windows Control Panel:
Printing problems may be corrected with User Tools by one or both of the following techniques:
If the previous notes do not yield a solution to your printing problem, you may have bad hardware or corrupted printing software. The following suggestions will help you to isolate the specific location of the problem in your printing setup.
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