[comp.unix.ultrix] LAT patches have messed up my Imagen printer -- help?

barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett) (03/27/91)

	Our DECsystem 5400 (Ultrix 4.0, Rev. 179) started crashing
mysteriously one day.  We traced the problem to LAT (/etc/lcp in rc.local),
and DEC had a kernel patch for the problem:

>The kernel modules in file lat.24SEP90.tar correct the following problems:
>...
>  2)	PANICS
>	The following panics have been fixed:
>
>	"unaligned access" - caused by receipt of a large status message

This fixed the crashing, but has hosed our Imagen printer.  It has been
connected to a DECserver 200 terminal server for many months in its current
configuration, working perfectly.  As soon as we installed the LAT patches
on our 5400, the Imagen refused to print binary files (such as TeX DVI
files).  The symptoms are that the files enter the printer but do not come
out.  If you send an ordinary text file to the printer, it "pushes out" the
pages of the old binary file printout (totally garbled).

	In addition, print jobs sometimes just hang, saying "no daemon
present" or "waiting for imagen to connect" (lpq messages).

	Ultrix Software Support tried to help us for a while, but finally
said (oh, those famous words), "Sorry, the Imagen is not a supported
printer" and that was the end of the help.

	So now, the best printer in our department doesn't work anymore.

(1)	Can anyone help?  So far, we have already tried using different
	ttys for the printer, and moving the "op" and "ts" printcap items
	onto the /etc/lcp command line.  No dice.

	I am toying with the idea of setting up a remote print queue on
	a different machine for the Imagen.  But this is a last resort,
	since our "other machines" are unreliable.

(2)	Has anyone else gotten these LAT patches and had a similar problem?

(3)	Will DEC ever consider my problem as an Ultrix LAT problem, or is
	this unlikely ever to be "fixed" in later versions of Ultrix?

                                                        Dan

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barrett@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU (Dan Barrett) (03/28/91)

In article <7834@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> I wrote:
>As soon as we installed the LAT patches on our 5400, the Imagen refused to
>print binary files....
>In addition, print jobs sometimes just hang, saying "no daemon present" or
>"waiting for imagen to connect" (lpq messages).

	I forgot to mention how I fix the problem (temporarily).  I kill
and restart LAT (/etc/lcp -t, followed by /etc/lcp -s -h ...), and the
queued file prints.  Sometimes I have to kill/restart several times.
	The next time I send a file, it hangs in the queue again.

                                                        Dan

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jv@mh.nl (Johan Vromans) (03/28/91)

In article <7834@jhunix.HCF.JHU.EDU> I wrote:
> As soon as we installed the LAT patches on our 5400, the Imagen refused to
> print binary files....
> In addition, print jobs sometimes just hang, saying "no daemon present" or
> "waiting for imagen to connect" (lpq messages).

I have the same problems, but I can add extra information.

I have two systems (DECsystem5000/200's) that are clustered together.
They run Ultrix 4.0. They share the /usr file system, but they have
their own private / and /var . Their kernels are identical.

In the original set-up, system ONE did the printing via LAT, and
system TWO printed remote on ONE. Both system accepted LAT sessions.

Then system ONE started crashing with the problems described in the
referenced articles. So I disabled LAT on ONE, and had system TWO
printing directly via LAT. This way I had two systems running, though
only one of them supported LAT.

Then I patched the kernel of ONE, after which it could handle LAT
again. But now it exposes the printer problems. System TWO, with an
un-patched kernel, still runs, accepts LAT connections and prints via
LAT. 

If the problem were in the network or in the terminal servers --we have
DECserver200's-- I would have expected both systems to suffer.
If it were in the (Ultrix-) software, I would also expect both systems
to suffer equally.
Both systems are doing well on TCP/IP and NFS, so the network hardware
seems reliable.

Wonderful, isn't it?

	Johan
-- 
Johan Vromans				       jv@mh.nl via internet backbones
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