Re: Remote outq vs. *DEVD

You're using SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) drivers to talk to the printer. SYSDRVPGM(*IBMSNMPDRV). SNMP supports page ranges and other elements of printer control.

9100 is the well-known port for PDL (page description language). PDL is a pretty generic term. Lots of different protocols are supportd.

SNMP uses several well-known ports for datagram services. 161 and 162, in particular. It would be interesting to check if these ports are open in your network.

You might check the printer documentation and see if SNMP is really supported on 9100. You might find that there is a lot of protocol negotiation going on here. It could be that IBM I is trying to contact port 9100 using SNMP, but the printer only supports IPP (Internet Print Protocol) on that port. Several more attempts are made before a "compatible" protocol is agreed. Note that there is also a SYSDRVPGM(*IBMIPPDRV) configuration available.

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of jmmckee flinthills.com
Sent: Wednesday, December 28, 2011 8:23 AM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: Remote outq vs. *DEVD

This is the source for one of the *DEVD printers.  Not knowing better, defaults were used.

Defaults can be the issue.

I can't recall where in this thread the settings were asked for.  So, it is out of sequence.

CRTDEVPRT DEVD(AD1P024R) DEVCLS(*LAN) TYPE(3812) MODEL(1) +
   LANATTACH(*IP) PORT(9100) ATTACH(*DIRECT) ONLINE(*YES) +
   FONT(11 *NONE) FORMFEED(*AUTOCUT) SEPDRAWER(*FILE) +
   PRTERRMSG(*INQ) MSGQ(*CTLD) ACTTMR(170) INACTTMR(*SEC15) +
   LINESPEED(19200) WORDLEN(8) PARITY(*NONE) STOPBITS(1) +
   TRANSFORM(*YES) MFRTYPMDL(*LEXOPTRAS) PPRSRC1(*LETTER) +
   PPRSRC2(*LETTER) ENVELOPE(*NUMBER10) ASCII899(*NO) +
   IMGCFG(*NONE) CHRID(*SYSVAL) RMTLOCNAME('10.51.51.24') +
   WSCST(BSYOBJ1/SADPOPTRA2) SYSDRVPGM(*IBMSNMPDRV) +
   TEXT('Admissions - 1st floor - Registration') +
   PUBLISHINF(*UNKNOWN *UNKNOWN *UNKNOWN *UNKNOWN *BLANK +
       (*UNKNOWN))


John McKee

On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 11:24 PM, Jim Franz <franz400@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John,
A laundry list of possibilities:

With several hundred lasers, & max active is 33, depending upon how
often they have spools to print, could be too low.

I would also check on the hardware side, and see if these printers
going into an energy saver mode that needs time to wake up.

As Larry pointed out the biggest issue has usually been limited memory
in spool subsystem.

Is this a spooled file generated from rpg or similar, or is this spool
sent to a monitored queue, where some "package" software processes it,
and outputs a 2nd spooled file that actually gets sent to the printer
outq? If so, the subsystem that runs the package software may be
memory or max active constrained.
Is InfoPrint Server involved?

Are the Lexmark Optra's with IPDS cards?  & how much memory in the
printer & ipds card?

I know you said the lasers have a form on a chip, but the spooled file
may have other resource issues:
Is the final spooled file attributes:
Printer device type ??
Device Requirements - what is flagged as "Y" ??
Front and or Back overlays?
Form Definition?
User defined objects or data?

Any font substitution messages on qsysopr?

Isn't performance hunting fun??
The redbooks IBM eServer iSeries Printing VI and VII, IBM AS/400
Printing V, have many references to performance issues. Printing VI
and VII have a lot to do with InfoPrint client & server, but also other printing issues.
Printing V has a lot of AFP and PSF/400 issues, but also other
printing issues...

Finally - make sure the latest Print Group PTF for your OS version is
installed, and if InfoPrint Server (I could not find a list of ptf's
but I'm sure there is one...)

Jim Franz

----- Original Message -----
From: "jmmckee flinthills.com" <jmmckee@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Midrange Systems Technical Discussion" <midrange-l@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2011 8:37 PM
Subject: Re: Remote outq vs. *DEVD


We have several hundred laser printers attached.  I don't know the
percentage that are set us as remote output queues.  Most of the time,
very low print volume.  Does the number of output queues effect
performance even when no data is being sent to be printed?

Also, I heard a comment attributed to a third party.  The comment, as
best as I heard it and can remember, (noisy room), was that it could
take 90 seconds for a queue to get rescanned for output to print, and
performance depended on when new output arrived in the queue.  That
sounds odd, somehow.  I have no idea where the 90 seconds came from.
As to CPU load, this box has never appeared slow.  The few times I
have looked, percent CPU has never been even over 30.

Makes me wonder if spooling subsystem priority is also a factor.  But,
I am loathe to mess with settings and get the sa who resides in his
own world, "offended".  As far as I can tell, this issue should really
be his to deal with.  But, nobody wants to get involved with him.
Where can I get a job where nobody ever asks me to do anything and I
don't get fired for doing almost nothing?  Very sad situation.

John McKee

On Tue, Dec 27, 2011 at 3:45 PM, DrFranken <midrange@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

I suspect very little. If each is using host print transform they
both need to do that work and the rest is communications.

First thing I would take a look at is the size of the memory pool
used for spooling/printing. Bring up WRKSYSSTS and use F21 to set to
2 or 3(Intermediate or Advanced). Use F10 to reset statistics then
have someone crank up a print job that is tagged as 'slow'. Using F5
(Not
F10) refresh the screen and watch the Fault columns for the *SPOOL
pool. I have seen those numbers go to 4 digits then I see the spool
pool is at a measly 4 or 8M....... and that's the problem. If that's
the case the pool needs to hold a bit more memory when it's not being
used so that when work comes along it has space to work.

To fix it use WRKSHRPOOL and adjust the 'Minimum Size %' column for
the *SPOOL pool. (You'll need to press F11 to see it) The default is
1 meaning it can shrink to 1% of the total memory on the system. For
a 4G machine that's 40M but if you have a 1G machine it's only 10
which isn't likely enough. Available memory is displayed at the top of that page.
Using that, figure out the percentage needed to set the 'floor' at
about 32M to start. Then test again to see if performance improves.
If not perhaps 48M is a good next step.

Of course if the machine is pounding along at 100% CPU this might not
help as much so standard warning about YMMV!

I have seen this small change turn 2 minutes into 10 seconds for a
print job, hopefully it helps you as much!

- Larry "DrFranken" Bolhuis

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