Common Problems and Procedures - Printing

Introduction / Philisophy

(paper/trans, oldname/newname, centralisation/distibution)

The general scheme is that print services are centralised; i.e. there is one print server which knows all printers, this is serv1. All workstations, PCs, other servers, specify printers as remote to serv1.

The VLT team however would prefer that their print services are not centralised in such a way, or at least were not dependent on the same printer server as everyone else. However in the interests of maintainance, and because of various JetDirect problems most printers have not been set up this way, and there is a general move towards the centralised model as reconfiguring and adding printers becomes necessary.

The printer server serv1 is a slow machine and massively overloaded. it is being phased out, and at the same time

  • User can't print
  • Adding a new printer to a Sun
  • Adding a new printer to an HP
  • Suppressing printer banners
  • Junk printed out

    • It means serv1 has serious problems. If this happens on one printer then the chances are that all the others are about to develop the same problem. Rebooting serv1 fixes the problem, though the system load shoots up when the machine comes back up.

  • Locations (link)
  • Can print to old name but not to new name
  • Transparency printer jams
  • Configuring for TCP/IP access
  • Printer producing mirror images

    • There is a switch on the paper tray (yes, on the paper tray) that determines this. Flick the switch.

  • Commands appear to suggest that job was printed, but nothing comes out

    • This has been caused by corrupt postscript files generated by Windows users using the wrong printer driver. Get the user to 'print to a file' using the same printer/printer driver combination and then examine the file. Typically the first line will not start '%!' as all postscript files should. Pass this on over to the PC Support team.

    $Header$