Topic: Printer Spool / Performance

[Tom Docking]

G'day all,

An interesting one which I haven't found in the phorum before (or in any Samba documents yet).


I am having a couple of rather nasty problems with printer performance on my e-smith network.


1) Whenever I print a document (regardless of type & programme), the whole job gets processed locally and thrown to the spool on the e-smith box.

Obviously there is nothing wrong with processing the job locally, however the data going to the spool on the e-smith box takes ages to get there. As such, whenever I print anything, I have to go off and do something else while it gets around to it.


2) Whenever I go to do a print preview, change printers or build reports in Crystal Reports, Windows 2000 Server wishes to have a quick chat with the printer driver. It would seem that this printer driver also wants to make sure that the printer is alive and well.

Every time this happens, the system ends up waiting for 5-10 seconds as the server churns away at the disk.


Now, my thoughts are that it has something to do with spooling.

1) I was wondering, is it possible to create a local spool directory (on the Windows box) for each printer and then mount them under the /var/spool directory in the linux box as the spool directory for the printer?

Would there be a time saving in this, or would data simply be transfered to the e-smith box before being sent back to the Windoze box and back to the e-smith box as it gets sent to the printer?

2) Is there perhaps an option in Win2K's printer settings that I might need to change?

3) Can I employ a pre-processor on the e-smith box and get the work performed on the e-smith box instead of the Windows machine?


The reason that this is a concern is because of the network setup:

1 x E-smith box  - in Server & Gateway mode. (192.168.1.10)
1 x Win2K Server - works as Terminal Server (192.168.1.1)
6 x workstations all using Win2K Terminal Services (asstd)

The Win2K Server runs all programmes on the network locally in a thin-client setup. The workstations are just plain vanilla boxes that I put together using various Pentium boards laying around. They don't do any work, so we can rule them out of the equation.

Since the Win2K server does all of the work, if it slows down from printing, it slows down -every- user! This is why it is a problem.


The E-Smith server is sharing the internet connection as well as the printers. It has two printers; a Mita photocopier with printer board & a Canon BJC3000. The slowdown affects both printers. I believe the printer board on the copier speaks PCL5 (not postscript).

The Win2K is using TCP/IP only, with the e-smith gateway as both its gateway and DNS server.


Surely things shouldn't be this clunky? What am I missing?

Thanks in advance. (I'm off to download and install the latest Samba - just in case.)


Rev. Tom Docking.

[Bill Talcott]

We have a similar setup here, with an NT4 domain server and Citrix WinFrame server providing processing power for the PCs on our LAN.  The powers that be keep upgrading the PCs though, so they do a fair amount of work. Some of them have printers attached directly, and shared to the rest of the LAN. One was "upgraded" to a DeskJet 952C not too long ago. I found that it takes 10-15 seconds in the Windows printer selection box just to choose that printer in the drop-down box. If a user has the DJ952C set as their default printer, it produces that 10-15 second delay between each printer as you move down the list. Simply setting the default printer to one of the lasers on the network gets rid of the problem. The PC originally had a laser installed on it, and that worked fine. The delay seems to be linked directly to the DJ952C.

The e-smith is acting only as a gateway and IMAP server. There are no printers connected to it or installed on it. The NT and Citrix servers handle all the network stuff, while the e-smith takes care of our internet connection. The delay is present when selecting the DeskJet, or when selecting any printer if the DJ is the default.

If you can, try to print to the printers across a network without the e-smith and see if the same thing happens. I'm wondering if it's something in the BJC similar to the DJ, where it seems to be either a hardware or driver problem or something. I know this doesn't really answer your question, but I thought it might provide some relevant info...

Bill

[Tom Docking]

Another thought;

What about if I set the clients to print plain ol' PostScript and used Ghostscript (or Cups) to filter the postscript files into the proprietary printer formats used by the appropriate printers?

Has anybody tried this before? How well does it work?


Cheers,

Tom

[erik de wild]

e-smith is based on red hat 7.1 I had this on my computer and my hp400 inkjet printer worked just fine The linux box simulated a gohstscript printer.In an article in a dutch linux magazine I read that that was the idea of the way the linux kernel deals with printing, simulating a goshtscriptprinter with the printerspoolprogram.

The "normal" redhat distribution has a tool called "printtool"  to configure the printerserver for your printer. I had to use some ghostscript options (-sPAPERSIZE=A4 -dBitsPerPixel=1) and my hp400 was operating as a goshtscript printer. With e-smith my printer is just spitting empty papers.

Is there a way to configure the printers in e-smith in the same way a a printer is configured in normal redhat distribution, using "printtool" Mayby that would also solve the problems mentioned above.

With friendly regards,

Erik de Wild