System information

Red Book for AIX Rel. 7.0 and 8.0

Troubleshooting Tip from Customer Newsletter

If you are using an AIX RS6000 and have Ethernet/network printers that are going down

regularly, it is likely that you have not set the printer timeout period. This timeout factor keeps

the printer online for a specified period of time while a physical problem with the printer is

corrected. The recommended setting is 999, which gives you 999 minutes before the printer will

go down in the event of a paper jam or other such physical problem.

To set the printer timeout period, execute the following commands:

smit queue <cr>

Select: Programming Tools

Select: Queues and Queue Devices

Select: Queue Devices

Select: Change / Show Characteristics of a Queue Device

The fast path is: smit pq_chquedev

Change the field BACKEND PROGRAM pathname to read: /usr/lib/lpd/rembak -T999

The line will read — in most cases: "/usr/lib/lpd/rembak". It will be necessary to arrow to the end

of the line and add a space and then -T999. Be sure to use an uppercase T.

If you do not feel comfortable making this change then feel free to call us in Systems Support for

assistance.

The correct time to set this is when you are setting the print queue up — when executing the smit

command: smit queue. The path to this screen is:

Smit queue

Add a Print Queue

Select the option: remote

Select the option: Standard processing

Note the option: Backend TIME OUT period (minutes)

Putting a 999 in this field when setting up the printer will insure that you have 999 minutes

before your printer times out and goes into a DOWN status as indicated by the command: lpstat