Environment
Line Printer Daemon protocol - LPD
Line Printer Remote protocol - LPR
Set up as follows:
iPrint Client ->
NetWare 6.5 SP7 + NDPS Gateway (NDPSGW) + Printer Agent ->
Via LPD ->
Pharos Uniprint running on Microsoft Windows 2003 ->
Physical Printer
Line Printer Remote protocol - LPR
Set up as follows:
iPrint Client ->
NetWare 6.5 SP7 + NDPS Gateway (NDPSGW) + Printer Agent ->
Via LPD ->
Pharos Uniprint running on Microsoft Windows 2003 ->
Physical Printer
Situation
Using the above configuration, print jobs get missed, half done,
corrupt, etc.
Resolution
Customer reported that further testing showed that iPrint spooling
to a Windows server running LPD (i.e. the Native Print services for
Unix) does not display this corruption.
The corruption appears to be a as a result of the LPR/LPD communication between Novell LPR and the Pharos LPD service, which is not seen with the Native Windows LPD.
As part of the troubleshooting process, adding THROTTLE=2 parameter to the agent (per KB 3233501) fixes this issue but slows things down causing a backlog of print jobs. This is to be expected as the THROTTLE switch is designed to slow down the print job in order to allow the receiving LPD service, in this case Pharos Uniprint, to keep up. Printer pooling can be used to set up multiple LPD paths to the server to compensate for the throttle delay.
The corruption appears to be a as a result of the LPR/LPD communication between Novell LPR and the Pharos LPD service, which is not seen with the Native Windows LPD.
As part of the troubleshooting process, adding THROTTLE=2 parameter to the agent (per KB 3233501) fixes this issue but slows things down causing a backlog of print jobs. This is to be expected as the THROTTLE switch is designed to slow down the print job in order to allow the receiving LPD service, in this case Pharos Uniprint, to keep up. Printer pooling can be used to set up multiple LPD paths to the server to compensate for the throttle delay.
Additional Information
The problem initially appeared to occur after the NetWare server
was upgraded from SP6 to SP7. However, the Windows server
running Uniprint was virtualised at around the same time so it is
possible that some latency was introduced into the system which
caused, or contributed to, this problem.