HP Distributed Print Service Administration Guide

382 Chapter13

Troubleshooting

Problems with Physical Printers

Physical Printer State is “needs-key-operator”

If the pdls command returns a printer state of needs-key-operator,

HPDPS might not be able to communicate with the printer device. Check

that the printer is conﬁgured correctly, is turned on and is connected. If

the printer device is TCP/IP-attached, use your local troubleshooting

procedures to see if you are having network problems. Use the pdls

command to list the attribute values you should check to verify that the

printer is conﬁgured correctly. The attributes that should be checked

depend on the attachment-type and printer-model.

If you do not ﬁnd anything wrong with the printer device, ﬁnd the error

and notiﬁcation messages for the physical printer and its associated

printer device. Once you ﬁnd an error or notiﬁcation message relating to

the problem, use the pdmsg command on the message number, and

perform the suggested response action.

To ﬁnd error and notiﬁcation messages:

• look in the spooler and supervisor error logs. See “Finding and

Viewing Server (Spooler and Supervisor) Error Logs” in Chapter 12

for instructions.

• look at the administrator's and operator's screens

• look at the administrator's and operator's electronic mail

Some possible problems that would not show up in error messages

include:

• the device driver was removed or altered by an administrator

• the device name speciﬁed by the physical printer device-name

attribute is not correct

Physical Printer State is “timed-out”

If your pdls command used to display information about a physical

printer displays a printer state of timed-out, the physical printer was

not able to connect to its printer device within the physical printer's

time-out period. The time-out period is speciﬁed by the value for the

printer-timeout-period physical printer attribute value.

The physical printer is not able to connect to the printer device because a

second HPDPS physical printer or print queue is also sending output to

the same printer device. The second HPDPS physical printer or print