[clue-tech] I'm not playing fair

[Roger Frank]

I think it's because I am ignoring the NT machine that "owns" the
JetDirect printer.  Here's the deal.  All my machines remote print to
the queue on my Linux server.  On the server, that queue is tied
to a JetDirect printer at a network address 192.168.109.40 or some
such.  If a student prints to lp, it goes to the server and to the
HP-4000 on the network.  Today we tried 25 students all printing
a three page document at the exact same instant.  Each time
we tried this, the first few came out and then the error message
came that the printer lp was down.  I checked lpq on the server
and the jobs were all there, but sure enough it reported the printer
was down.  Plenty of paper, just no output.

I was thinking that the printer, though on the network, still was
owned by somebody.  There must be a queue manager for it
somewhere.  I'm thinking that I'm not playing fair by sending my
jobs directly to the printer -- shouldn't I be sending the to
the machine that think's it's the machine controlling the printer?
I wonder if that's why it goes down.  Yet I *really* don't want
to send it to the NT machine to get to the printer.

If I had an extra printer, I could put that on the Linux 
server and print on the dedicated printer.  I gues I'll try that
tomorrow.  But it would be nice to understand and fix the
problem with sending to the JetDirect.  It's so much faster,
and students like to send their print jobs when there is about
30 seconds left until the bell to change classes...

-- 
Roger Frank
rfrank at linuxclassroom.org