Low printer with lomg processing times ; network issues

Question

Hello,
We are running ECC6 on HP-UX 11.23/Oracle 10.2
We have configured all our printers ( more than 300) using the host spool access method L : Print Locally using LP/LPR.
Every day, we have the same printers with the sames "low printers" :
sm21 syslog shows ;
Printer WRAL Temporarily Locked Due to Connection Problem
Spool Process logs indicates ;
Fri Feb 17 11:09:37 2012
  Warning: lpq on printer WRAL took 16 seconds!
  RSPOSYSLOG:
  SYSLOG written: CODE FBL, locat 28, param WRAL&16&
There are several notes that indicate how to deactivate the printer pooling, but still, the best thing to do is to pinpoint the
root cause of the issue, .....which we haven't
I checked the spool distribution times in transaction STAD, I have unusuallyhigh "processing times" values.
But I can't underdstand it.
Is it a network processing time ?
Our network team tell us that there is nothing abnormal, but is there a way to check from SAP , any netwok issue with the printers ?
Thanks
Edited by: Raoul Shiro on Feb 17, 2012 5:09 PM

Answer 1

Hi,
For log "Printer WRAL Temporarily Locked Due to Connection Problem", it means
that for a period of xxx seconds (parameter rspo/lpq/temp_disable_time) no query or printing from sap for this printer are done anymore.
This has no influence on the printout from any other application. The only effect is that the printer is 'disabled' within sap.
The idea behind this concept is to prevent that a slow query can slow down the overall print performance of one server. During the query the spool wp cannot do anything else. In this time no printout to any printer from this server can be done.
It would seem that the problem is outside of the R/3 system and is at UNIX or printer level. Perhaps you had a temporary Network or printer problem. You can test by executing the lpstat query to this printer at OS level.
You can find out the exact lpstat query that your system uses, by looking at the system parameters 'rspo/host_spool/query'.
The parameter &P in the command will be substituted by the host device name.
If everything is correct in your unix spooler then it is very likely that the printer is not working correctly, so the unix spooler can't send print jobs to this printer, Therefore SAP blocks this printer for a certain time trying not to overload the unix spool queue.
You might want to temporarily turn off the query but if there is a problem with a specific printer or OS problem, this
will not be reported back to R/3.
Some SAP notes:
385794 - Connection problems with network access methods
20924  - Parameter settings for remote printing
Regards,
Vincent