Goetz Neumann ([log in to unmask]) wrote:
: John wrote:
: >Just wondering if any of you have seen the following:
: >
: >  We came in this morning and found an active spoolfile on one of
: >  our remote Laserjet IVsi printers.  The Operator tried a few
: >  commands such as suspending spooling for the device.  She was
: >  unable to affect the situation.  For what ever reason, she did a
: >  stopspool on the device next.  SCREEEETTTHHH!  The entire system
: >  locked up.  She called the user department and found that the
: >  printer wasn't online.  As soon as the online button was pressed,
: >  the system took off again.
 
: this looks similar to a complete system hang, that I had
: to analyse a while ago.
: Basically it has to do with the spooler getting too many
: user commands queued at its message port, while it cannot
: proceed with IO to an offline device. An ABORTIO <ldev>
: will probably also cleanup the situation.
: Look up HPSL for SR # 1650170761, a patch (MPEFXY7 ?) shall
: also be available for 4.0, and it was fixed in 5.0 (Pull
: and Push).
 
I've not seen John's problem before, so I can't comment on that.  However,
it is not the problem related by Goetz (which is patched and fixed as he
related).  In that situation, one had a true three-way deadlock.  Putting
a printer online (or any other event) would not relieve the impasse; it
was truly necessary to reboot the system.
 
-Larry "MPE/iX Spoolers 'R' Us^H^HMe" Byler-