Print jobs randomly go to different printers

Novell Cool Solutions: Question & Answer

Posted: 17 Nov 2004

Q:
We just migrated from NetWare 4.11, and are having a perplexing problem when we print on our 6.5 network. The print jobs are just randomly being sent to different printers. Like we have one called Mutt and one called Jeff, and you can't predict which one it will show up on. Very aggravating for the users! Any thoughts?



A:
Sounds like you accidentally set up your printers in a Printer Pool. Here's what the doc says about Printer Pooling:

You can create a pool of printers to share the load of printing. Users install one of the printers in the pool. When a printer in the pool has a print job waiting, the Print Manager can redirect that print job to an idle printer in the pool. The Print Manager attempts to evenly distribute print jobs among all printers in a pool. For example, if 4 printers are in the pool and the first printer is printing a 100 page job, then the next print job will be sent to the second printer. If the second printer completes the print job, and the first printer is still busy, the next print job will be sent to the third printer.

Sounds like you don't want it to behave that way. Just delete the printer pool and you're back to normal -- Mutt will always print Mutt jobs, and Jeff will stick to Jeff.

To delete a printer pool:

1. From Novell iManager, click iPrint > Printer Pool Configuration.
2. Select the print services manager for this pool.
3. Select Delete Pool from the Select An Operation list, then click OK.
4. Specify the name of the printer pool. This name is only used to identify the pool within Novell iManager.
5. Select the printers you want included in the pool.
6. Click Next, then OK.

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