IBM 1572 Printers Stuck in Printing Status

How do they get the OUTQ/DEVD/PSF config you are asking for?  I had one of them try it but what they gave me doesn't seem right, it's a few page list of Software Resource List so pretty sure that's not what you are asking.

Outq: Use the WRKOUTQD command
Devd: Use the DSPDEVD command
PSF Config: DSPPSFCFG

- Gary Patterson

Attached are the config pages for those 3 things for one of our problem printers.

OK, several suggestions:

First, change your AS/400's TCP Keepalive Timer from the default of 120 minutes to 1 minute (this is an IBM recommendation - it allows dropped printer conections to be detected faster):

Awesome thanks for that info and link, this may prove very helpful.  I passed this on to my AS400 guys.  Also a couple things after reading through some of this, I looked on our printers and the IPDS Timeout values are set to HOST DEFINED, there is no option for 0 or Off, it just has HOST DEFINED and then a range of options from 15 seconds to a few minutes.  So since it's set to HOST DEFINED, any idea if that means that it's looking to the 400 for this value then and if so where is it I don't see it in these configs?

Also I was reading that link you posted and there is a section talking about how the printers should never be turned off while the writer is active and I'm sure this does happen fairly often due to paper jams and the users resetting them.  It suggests to set the value of AUTO SESSION RECOVERY to *YES so should we do that as well?  Any reason NOT to do that?

Thanks for all your help, appreciate this!

I suspect that "host defined" is fine, and that it means that the AS/400 host will control IPDS Timeout.

I don't know of any reason not to turn on Auto Session Recovery, especially in the environment yo describe.

Hope this gets you there.

- Gary Patterson

So we took all your suggestions and made those changes this morning on one of them and I walked by the one we changed on the way out to lunch and unfortunately found it stuck on PRINTING status again.  Also everytime I see this I go to the CANCEL PRINT option and find 1 stuck item, this one was stuck from about 40 min before I looked at it, and if I try to cancel it on the printer menu it actually gets stuck in CANCELLING status until I power it off and back on.

However my AS400 guy reported that no more errors on that printer are being logged.  So now I'm thinking that those errors he was seeing in the 400 are actually a result of the printers getting stuck and NOT the cause.  So wtf could cause 6 printers of the same type to all start doing that if it wasn't the AS400 that is causing it???? Any takers?

Contact the printer manufacturer's tech support. See if there is a printer firmware update available.

We already did that and loaded the latest firmware on all of them about a week ago.

Well, it sounds like the changes you made are allowing it to hang forever (or at least more than 40 minutes).  Could be a bug on the AS/400 side, and could be a bug in the printer.  Could also be a sign of a network problem (routing issue, dropped packets, improperly configured gateway).

A few more questions:

1) Are (any of) these printers on the same subnet with your AS/400?
2) What OS version are you running on the AS/400? (GO LICPGM, option 10)
3) What Cumulative (Cume) PTF level are you running? (http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh100603-story04.html)

Make sure you have the latest Printing Group PTF's for your AS/400 operating system version applied on the AS/400, too.  Use the DSPPTF command to determine if the latest Group PTF for printing is installed on your machine.


- Gary Patterson

PTF Number  Licensed Program   Version   Description
 
SF99356     5761SS1            V6R1M0    610 Print Group PTF for V6R1M0 
SF99347     5722SS1            V5R4M0    540 Print Group PTF for V5R4M0 
SF99346     5722SS1            V5R3M0    530 Print Group PTF for V5R3M0 
SF99345     5722SS1            V5R2M0    520 Print Group PTF for V5R2M0
                                              

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Is this what you wanted?

Licensed  Installed                                      
Program   Release     Description                        
5722SS1   V5R4M0 L00  Library QGPL                      
5722SS1   V5R4M0 L00  Library QUSRSYS                    
5722SS1   V5R4M0 L00  i5/OS                              
5722SS1   V5R4M0      Extended Base Support              
5722SS1   V5R4M0      Online Information                
5722SS1   V5R4M0      Extended Base Directory Support    
5722SS1   V5R4M0      System/38 Environment              
5722SS1   V5R4M0      Example Tools Library              
5722SS1   V5R4M0      AFP Compatibility Fonts            
5722SS1   V5R4M0      *PRV CL Compiler Support          
5722SS1   V5R4M0      Host Servers                      
5722SS1   V5R4M0      System Openness Includes          
5722SS1   V5R4M0      GDDM                              
5722SS1   V5R4M0      ObjectConnect                      
5722SS1   V5R4M0      Integrated Server Support          
5722SS1   V5R4M0      Qshell                              
5722SS1   V5R4M0      Domain Name System                  
5722SS1   V5R4M0      Portable App Solutions Environment  
5722SS1   V5R4M0      Digital Certificate Manager        
5722SS1   V5R4M0      PSF 1-45 IPM Printer Support        
5722SS1   V5R4M0      International Components for Unicode
5733906   V1R1M0      Server Firmware                    
5769AS1   V4R5M0      IBM WebSphere Application Server    
5716DCT   V3R7M0      Language Dictionaries for OS/400    
5716DCT   V3R7M0      Legal Dictionary - Option 14        
5716DCT   V3R7M0      Medical Dictionary - Option 15      
5716DCT   V3R7M0      US English Dictionary - Option 23  
5722DG1   V5R4M0      IBM HTTP Server for i5/OS          
 5722DG1   V5R4M0      Triggered Cache Manager                    
5722JC1   V5R4M0      IBM Toolbox for Java                      
5722JV1   V5R4M0      IBM Developer Kit for Java                
5722JV1   V5R4M0      Java Developer Kit 1.3                    
5722JV1   V5R4M0      Java Developer Kit 1.4                    
5722JV1   V5R4M0      Java Developer Kit 5.0                    
5722JV1   V5R4M0      J2SE 5.0 32 bit                            
5799PTL   V4R5M0      iSeries Tools For Developers              
5722PT1   V5R4M0      IBM Performance Tools for iSeries          
5722PT1   V5R4M0      Performance Tools - Manager Feature        
5722QU1   V5R4M0      IBM Query for iSeries                      
5722ST1   V5R4M0      DB2 Query Mgr and SQL DevKit              
5722TC1   V5R4M0      IBM TCP/IP Connectivity Utilities for i5/OS
5722WDS   V5R4M0      WDS for iSeries                            
5722WDS   V5R4M0      iSeries Tools - Application Development
5722WDS   V5R4M0      ILE RPG                                
5722WDS   V5R4M0      System/38 Compatible RPG III          
5722WDS   V5R4M0      RPG/400                                
5722WDS   V5R4M0      ILE RPG *PRV Compiler                  
5722WDS   V5R4M0      ILE COBOL                              
5722WDS   V5R4M0      System/38 Compatible COBOL            
5722WDS   V5R4M0      OPM COBOL                              
5722WDS   V5R4M0      ILE COBOL *PRV Compiler                
5722WDS   V5R4M0      ILE C                                  
5722WDS   V5R4M0      ILE C++                                
5722WDS   V5R2M0                                            
5722WDS   V5R2M0                                            
5722WDS   V5R2M0                                            
5722WDS   V5R4M0      Workstation Tools - Base                
5763XD1   V3R2M0      Client Access/400 Optimized for Windows
5722XE1   V5R4M0      IBM eServer iSeries Access for Windows  
5722XH2   V5R4M0      IBM eServer iSeries Access for Web      
5763XK1   V3R1M0      Client Access/400 for Windows 3.1      
5763XK1   V3R1M0      CA/400 - Windows 3.1 SBCS              
5722XW1   V5R4M0      IBM eServer iSeries Access Family      
5722XW1   V5R4M0      iSeries Access Enablement Support      
1TMELCF   V4R1M0      Tivoli Management Agent                
4SURVEY   V2R0M0      Linoma Software's Surveyor/400        

Part of it.  We are interested in the version number of the operating system (i5/OS).  As you can see above, this machine is running V5R4.  Now we just need to see the cume PTF and Printing Group PTF level.

- Gary Patterson

Our cume PTF is 9104 and printing group PTF is 30 but one of the AS400 programmers is going to update that to 32 sometime this week.  Still no change in the problem, still seeing this and I also finally got everybody moved to the new print server and disabled the old one and that didn't help but I dont' feel it's an issue with teh server anyway.  Everytime I see this happen there is a stuck job in the printer and I notate the time that the job was submit, then I check the print server logs and do not find any job being sent @ that time telling me it must have been an AS400 print job since I only see Windows ones logged.

Post back once you get up to date on PTFs.

- Gary Patterson

PTFs all up to date as of Sunday and issue still happening.  It actually happened right before our eyes while I was standing out in front of one of them discussing the problem with one of our AS400 team.  Basically how it happened was she actually had just printed some things from the AS400 and at the same time almost somebody else nearby printed something from Excel to the same printer.  The AS400 person got her AS400 stuff printed out, but the printer just sat stuck in PRINTING or BUSY/NETWORK status for a few minutes before we finally had to shut it off.  Before I shut it off I noted the time of 9:07 as the job stuck on the printer.  I checked my print server and did NOT see a job submit @ 9:07AM showing up in there.  

We tried to duplicate it multiple times by printing items from the AS400 and from Windows at almost the same time and while it looked like it was about to get stuck it finally printed them all.  Any other ideas?

I am able to duplicate this issue.  I printed a few items from the AS400 and also printed from Excel at the same time almost to the same printer and it successfully printed the AS400 items but NOT my Excel items.  The printer is now stuck in PRINTING status from 10:12AM.  I see the job on the print server submit @ 10:12AM and it shows successful, nothing showing stuck in the print queue on the server so the item appears to have been sent from the print server successfully and now its basically stuck in the printer.  This must be what's happening to cause this but why would this suddenly be happening and how to fix this?  Certainly somebody has ran into this before.

Actually I might have found it.  I printed out the printer setup page and then found one that was printed long ago and noticed a difference that stood out, it used to be that the Network Timeout option was set to 90 secs on the printer but now it's set to 0.  All the 1572's I found were set to 0 so I changed them all to 90 secs.  I tried to duplicate the issue again and could NOT so it appears maybe that's all it was I hope.  Giving it some time to make sure.

I have several suggestions.  First a word of warning - I am not familiar with this particular printer, but I have successfully resolved similar conflicts in the past.

Often, getting up-to-date on printing PTFs resolved the issue.

1) If you have support, open trouble tickets with IBM (AS/400 and Printing).  This may be a know issue, though I did a quick search on IBM Service and didn't see anything promising.
2) Check to see if there is an updated Windows driver for this printer, and install it.  You will need to make sure that all of your Windows clients are running the latest driver, of course.
3) If this printer is capable of receiving LPD jobs on multiple ports simultaneously, configure the AS/400s to use one port, and Windows to use a different port.
4) If the printer is capable of receiving jobs through multiple protocols, configure Windows and the AS/400 to use different protocols for printing to this printer.  For example, if Windows is using LPD, then configure the AS/400 to use SNMP or IPP, or vice-versa.
5) Configure Print Services for Unix on a Windows print server, and reconfigure the AS/400 to print to the Windows print server instead of directly to the printer.
6) Use Client Access to

Looks like your #6 was cut short.

I did actually check #2 and there are newer drivers for these printers, but what's really wierd is if I install them, they don't show up as IBM InfoPrint 1572 instead it says like Infoprint 1000 series which you would think is OK, but if I install them then it causes the print spooler service to die instantly near the end of the install.  I even brought up a brand new Win2k3 server with all the latest SP and updates and tried it on that fresh one and same problem so it appears the only drivers that work are the original ones from 2006 I believe it is.

I'm gonna see if that Timeout change on the printers fixed it and will report back.

I was in the middle of a response when you said you thought changing timeout settings fixed it.  I can give you other workarounds if needed, but odds are it is timing.

The printer timing settings are discussed at the top if that IBM Support document that I posted in my very first response above (ID:24954179).  

IBM has recommended settings for most of the configurable timers on the printer.  I though we were past all of that.

- Gary Patterson

After changing that setting on all the printers yesterday I didn't see it happen again the rest of the day.  Also this morning when I came in none of them were stuck and that was unusual because every day there was at least 1 stuck on PRINTING from the night before.

However before I could call it good we ran into some trouble this morning that makes me think it's not over yet.  I got a call from somebody downstairs stating one of the printer writers kept ending and he had to keep starting it.  I got with an AS400 person and we were looking at the writers, at one point one of the other printer writers also ended and I watched her start that one again.  We both went downstairs to look at what was going on and when I first got down there I noticed one of them, not the one that was being complained about, but the other that I had noticed ended while we were looking at the other one, was stuck the all too familiar PRINTING status.  I powered it off and back on, and when it got READY again it went back to PRINTING and got stuck immediately.  I looked at the time on the job that was stuck and it was 18:00.  This really is wierd now because that is the 3rd time I've seen a print job stuck from 18:00 exactly and 3 days in a row now and 3 different printers.  I had to turn it off and on to get it going again.  The other printer that the writer kept ending turned out there is a certain report somebody was printing to cause that and that was taken care of.

OK so what could be happening to cause some old job from 18:00 (from some unknown day for all I know it could be 18:00 on a day from last month or something) to keep getting stuck in the printers randomly?  Could this wonky random job maybe be the cause of this?

Man, you aren't catching any breaks with this one, are you?

It sounds to me like you could have a print job that is causing the printer to hang.  If you do a WRKOUTQ on the problem printer, you can display the attributes of the problem spooled file, including the creation date, job that created it, spooled file name, printer datastream type, etc.

Sounds like you may have a scheduled job that is kicking out a bad print file.  That would explain the repeated 18:00 timestamp.  Your AS/400 admin should be able to help you determine if it is the same program that keeps creating the problem file.

If that is the case, you'll probably need to get a developer involved to figure out what is causing the file to stall.

Also, on the WRKOUTQ command, you can press F11 to show multiple views of the spooled file info, including the date the spooled file was created.

- Gary Patterson

Update -

Still having the same trouble.  Actually what happened after I went around to each printer and changed the NETWORK TIMEOUT setting from 0 to 90 was the problem got worse because whenever somebody printed from the AS400 and then also a network print was attemped at about the same time it would stop the writer on the AS400.  Then once the writer was started again it would reprint the last AS400 item then stop the writer again.

 I changed the NETWORK TIMEOUT back to 0 on all the printers and that stopped that issue but now back to the original issue of them randomly getting stuck on PRINTING on the printers.  I found that if I hit the STOP button on the printer, then choose RESET PRINTER, it resets the printer then spits out the stuck item and continues working until this happens again.  This is easier than turning the printer off and on but still doesn't resolve anything and it doesn't appear to be a scheduled job causing any issues since the jobs I see getting stuck are random times all day so they are just AS400 printouts people try to send, and remember I can duplicate this issue by printing something from the 400 and immediately trying to print something from the network, it will always print out the AS400 item but get stuck on the network item.  Other suggestions?

Go back to my post above, number 25070567.  There are several thing you can try there.

- Gary Patterson

I checked and found we already apparently are using the latest drivers for the printer.  As for opening a ticket with IBM I don't have access to do that and our project managers unassigned the AS400 programmer from the issue leaving just me, dunno why as I'm not an AS400 person so gonna hafta fight em on that lol.  I found another thread on experts exchange @ http://www.experts-exchange.com/Hardware/Peripherals/Printers_Scanners/Q_22451694.html and apparently the user also has not yet resolved the issue but it helped me figure out how to view the writer logs.  

I did that and attached a file showing what errors I'm seeing in the writer log.

I had this happen to my some of my IBM 1572 printers after I upgraded to OS V6R1....

After talking to IBM printing group, the solution ended up being applying the latest printing group PTF's...some of those do not come in CUMS.

I see you say you applied the PTF's...Just checking here...Did you do an IPL afterwards?? That was required for the PTF's I applied...then the problem went away.  

Hrm, I didn't apply the printing group PTFs but somebody else did, that was a couple Sunday's ago ago though and I'm fairly certain that the AS400 does an auto IPL once a week.  I'm pretty certain after those printing group PTFs were applied that I still saw the problem occur, however to be honest I have NOT seen this problem happen at all this week.  I've been monitoring the GUI page and doing walkby checks fo the printers and have not yet seen one stuck on PRINTING this week.

It seems the issue now is one of them randomly having an issue with the writer ending abnormally which really I think is a different issue.  It almost seems like the issue with them getting stuck may finally be resolved but I'm going to do more monitoring and followup before I say for sure on that.

Yesterday I took both printers off the Netgear switch I had them on and plugged directly into the wall.  I had to run a long cable for one of them but I used brand new cables too, and the problem still was happening so I ruled that out.  

I contacted IBM and opened a ticket.  We found that one printer was using port 9600 and one was using 9100, she had me change the one using 9600 to 5001 and the one using 9100 to 9600, not sure why exactly but did that.  So far so good since yesterday but I didn't talk to them until about closing time so not enough time has passed to see if this made a difference.  I did notice that the other 2 IBM printers that WERE having this issue too at one point are both set to port 9600 so I'm almost thinking maybe I should have all of them set to that port.

She said if this doesn't help she wants me to run a trace and sent instructions for that.  I'll report back after I find anything.

Both of mine are 9600...I always use 9600 as the standard port config for an IPDS printer setup..

I use 9100 on NON-IPDS

Ya Gary I did tell one of our AS400 people to do that, change the ports, and I believe they did as they told me they did but I didn't know how to change/check them myself so I had no way of verifying for myself at the time.  I bet they probably changed the ports on the other 2 to 9600 and that fixed them since I haven't seen them having issues lately but maybe they didn't change the other 2 or changed them to other things.  Anyway we'll see how this goes, still so far so good.

If you can get to a command line on the as400 and you know the name of the device....

type DSPDEVD <device name>

like DSPDEVD PRINTER1 and press enter

you will see the port number

Ya they told me that on the phone yesterday so that was the first time I actually could check those on my own.  Still so far so good which is unusual as usually by now it's happened a few times so crossing my fingers.