Weird periodic nightmare

Question

Servers 2xNW6 SP4
Clients XPSP1 running Novell Clients 4.90SP2
We currently run a number of different NDS Que based printers and some NDPS
printers as well. We keep having this periodic nightmare, rougly every
three or four days.
The clients state the the printers are saying unable to connect to server
and are unavailable. The printer spooler service often breaks on XP this can
be restarted but does not fix the fault even rebooting the computers does
not fix the problem. This happens to all 500 clients at the same time and
the only way that seems to fix the problem is to reboot the server, then the
clients are fine, though a small handful sometimes need to be rebooted. I
have had a look at the error logs which dont show anything etc on the server
and whilst the problem is happening there seems to be no problems on the
server end. Though rebooting the servers fixes the problem.
Strange hey, any thoughts would be appreciated as this is starting to cause
major headaches.
Thanks
Brian

Answer 1

Brian,
Fisrt off I'm going to ask you do you have ANY printers connected
DIRECTLY to the server? If you do this could cause NDPS to lock up when
the printer is turned off. Due to the fact that the server is in
continuous communication with the printer, when its turned off the ndps
system tries harder and harder to get a response from the printer, At
this point I dont believe this has been corrected, I had to actually put
my local printer onto a jetdirect in order to avoid this problem in the
future.
The second question is about print servers (jetdirects specifically) if
your using jetdirects, DONT use the hp-gateway. Besides odd lockup
problems with ndps that I Have expereneced multiple small jobs to a
single printer will cause the printer to dump and start from somewhere in
the middle. Its better to use the HP gateway via lpr. The name is RAW
for single port jetdirects and Raw1, Raw2, and Raw3 respectivly for 3
port jetdirects. Since I primarily use HPJD's its the only ones I have
memorized.
> Servers 2xNW6 SP4
> Clients XPSP1 running Novell Clients 4.90SP2
>
> We currently run a number of different NDS Que based printers and some
NDPS
> printers as well. We keep having this periodic nightmare, rougly every
> three or four days.
>
> The clients state the the printers are saying unable to connect to
server
> and are unavailable. The printer spooler service often breaks on XP
this can
> be restarted but does not fix the fault even rebooting the computers
does
> not fix the problem. This happens to all 500 clients at the same time
and
> the only way that seems to fix the problem is to reboot the server,
then the
> clients are fine, though a small handful sometimes need to be
rebooted. I
> have had a look at the error logs which dont show anything etc on the
server
> and whilst the problem is happening there seems to be no problems on
the
> server end. Though rebooting the servers fixes the problem.
>
> Strange hey, any thoughts would be appreciated as this is starting to
cause
> major headaches.
>
> Thanks
>
> Brian
>
>