mje@olsa99.UUCP (Mark J Elkins) (07/27/90)
This is a really wild story about the Line Printer Schedular on SCO Xenix 2.3.2. My customer, lp has worked fine for months - spooling to two different printers, one parallel (Called 'C0') and one serial (called 'C1'). C0 is also the default destination. All of a sudden - C0 stops - and refuses to work. Items queue up properly - but only 'C1' works. Leaving messages in the interface file does nothing, the interface is never run. Direct printing (cat file >/dev/lp) however works! Eventually - I create a 3rd (dummy) printer - and make it the default. Now both printers work! - though the dummy just collects jobs (It can't even print to /dev/null and the 'interface' is the line 'exit 0' ????). I assume that lpsched has been hit by a cosmic ray and re-install 'lpr'. I also do 'cmp's on the old and new. Absolutly no difference. On re-installing the two prointers, I do NOT set up a default - and everything works fine. I edit the file 'default' first to one then the other printer - and which ever is default refuses to print! (Stuff queued up on the previous 'default' always prints again.) Problem - customer _needs_ a default printer. Solution - No default in the default file - but the lines 'LPDEST=C0; export LPDEST' in /etc/profile 'covers up' the problem and the customer is happy. But I'm confused! What is going on? Why does lpsched seem to examine the 'default' printer - even after stuff is queued for the 'default' printer - but ONLY if the default is in /usr/spool/lp/default ???? -- . . ___. .__ Olivetti Systems & Networks, Unix Support - Africa /| /| / /__ UUCP: {uunet,olgb1,olnl1}!olsa99!mje (Mark Elkins) / |/ |ARK \_/ /__ LKINS mje@olsa99.UUCP (Postmaster) Tel: +27 11 339 9093