HP Distributed Print Service Administration Guide

Chapter 10 311
Managing Supervisors and Physical Printers
Responding to Physical Printer State Problems
Responding to Physical Printer State
Problems
The following describes the normal sequence of printer states for an
enabled and ready printer as it waits for, receives, and completes jobs:
1. The physical printer state is idle and the physical printer is ready to
accept a job.
2. The physical printer receives a job and the printer state changes to
connecting-to-printer while the physical printer tries to lock the
printer device.
3. The physical printer successfully locks the printer device within the
amount of time specified by its printer-timeout-period attribute.
The printer state changes to printing while job prints.
4. The printer device finishes the job and the physical printer state
returns to idle. The physical printer is ready for a new job.
The following physical printer states indicate problems with the physical
printer device:
• needs-attention
• needs-key-operator
• timed-out
Printer has needs-attention Problem
An HP-UX physical printer enters the needs-attention state under two
conditions. The first is when HPDPS locks the file for the printer device
but the printer hardware is not turned on. The second is when a job is
printing and the printer device has a problem, such as running out of
paper. In either case, after you correct the problem, the job continues
printing. When the job finishes, the physical printer will return to the
idle state.
HPDPS will notify you when a physical printer enters the
needs-attention state if the notification profile for the printer specifies
that you receive notification messages for the
printer-needs-attention event.