[K12OSN] Laser Printer super-slow?

[Jim Kinney]

this doesn't sound like a thin client issue at all. Remember, everything is
running on the server, not the client.

So a text file prints quickly but a complicated pdf fails.

So some things to look at are: what is the server using resource wise just
before the failure? sysstat is a tool to monitor system usage. It can be
tweaked in /etc/cron.d to run more frequently than every 10 minutes.

I would suggest testing with a less complicated (i.e. shorter) pdf. Make a
page or two in openoffice or extract a few pages from the 200 page monster
and try again. pdftools are a commandline option as well as just printing a
few pages. 17+ hours sounds like a memory shortage to me. Sysstat will show
disk usage in terms of swapfile activity.

Oh. The tool to view graphs of sysstat data is called sar. Uses java and
outputs really useful graphs. excellent tool!

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 10:24 PM, Joseph Bishay <joseph.bishay at gmail.com>wrote:

> Hello,
>
> >> Does plain text files print out quickly from this same printer?
>
> A single page of text from notepad prints fairly quickly.  The problem
> seems to focus around PDFs I believe as those are the only larger
> documents I've printed.
>
> > You might also run top locally on the client while something is printing
> > to find out if the client is CPU/memory bound (ex: swapping) etc.
>
> I sent a 200 page PDF (with some images, total size of the PDF 7 MB)
> and ran top.  What I saw, over the *17 hours* it took to print 100
> pages before it just crashed, was the cpu on the thin client not going
> over 2% and no swap being touched.  It looked like it was printing a
> page every 10 minutes or so, and then towards the last few pages the
> CPU usage went up to 99% and then back down to zero once it was
> finished.  The process was the jetdirect one I believe (don't have the
> file in front of me).
>
> So I'm not quite sure what the issue is.  The thin client is a Pentium
> 4 2.6 Ghz machine with a gig of RAM.
>
> Thanks
> Joseph
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 23, 2011 at 9:17 AM, Jeff Siddall <news at siddall.name> wrote:
> > On 06/23/2011 07:42 AM, Barry Cisna wrote:
> >> Joseph,
> >>
> >> Does plain text files print out quickly from this same printer?
> >> If this is the case try changing from the foomatic driver to the hplip
> >> driver.
> >> If you have networked HP printers the hplip driver provides lots of
> >> remote diagnostic 'stuff' as well.
> >> It is worth the time of getting acclimated with the hplip package.
> >> Here is were to get some general info on hplip and getting started using
> >> it:
> >>
> >>  http://hplipopensource.com/hplip-web/index.html
> >
> > You might also run top locally on the client while something is printing
> > to find out if the client is CPU/memory bound (ex: swapping) etc.
> >
> > Jeff
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > K12OSN mailing list
> > K12OSN at redhat.com
> > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
> > For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>
> >
>
> _______________________________________________
> K12OSN mailing list
> K12OSN at redhat.com
> https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/k12osn
> For more info see <http://www.k12os.org>
>



-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III

As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to
consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they
please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
- *2011 Noam Chomsky

http://heretothereideas.blogspot.com/
*
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/k12osn/attachments/20110626/e7a62f91/attachment.htm>