[28032] in Hotline Meeting
printers hanging 4/25/95
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (David Krikorian)
Tue Apr 25 23:43:33 1995
Date: Tue, 25 Apr 1995 23:43:16 -0400
From: David Krikorian <dkk@MIT.EDU>
To: hotline@MIT.EDU, cfyi@MIT.EDU, f_l@MIT.EDU, op@MIT.EDU, goop@MIT.EDU
This is a follow-up to mail and discussion about the problems we
experienced with printers today.
WHAT HAPPENED:
A 6.170 handout today contained a PostScript insert which printed
properly on some printers, but caused the Athena HP printers to hang
with something like "79 System Error". The printers then needed to be
power-cycled to recover.
Students in 6.170 (presumably those who missed lecture today) were
trying at various times of day to print the handout on various
printers, so the problem was very hard to locate. Fortunately, one of
the students was obnoxious enough [ :-) ] to try to print it to almost
every printer in W20, which pointed us quite clearly at the file
causing the problem. (That's when we found out it was for 6.170.)
In the meantime, the DCNS CSRs (Customer Service Reps -- the "Cluster
Group") had been going around rebooting printers whenever they found
one hung (which was pretty often!). A 6.170 TA (goop) was found, and
took the file away, thus ending our system-wide problem.
Afterwards, we worked on trying to solve the problem so students could
print the handout. It looks like Gupta has a solution.
This crisis should be over. The printers should no longer need to be
power-cycled on a regular basis. Students in the class have been
notified that the file was bad and that it should not be printed.
Thank you all for your help and your cooperation! (I even have 20
minutes left in my evening to do something other than work! :-)
