Setting Up Printer Fault Recovery

If you choose not to send any fault notification, you can find out about printing faults so you can correct the problem. The LP print service will not continue to use a printer that has a fault. In addition to alerts for printer faults, you can also provide alerts that tell the system administrator to mount print wheels, font cartridges, and forms when print requests require them.

You can define the fault recovery options for a printer only by using the lpadmin -F command. This task is not available in Solaris Print Manager.

Printer faults can be as simple as running out of paper or needing to replace a toner cartridge. Other more serious problems can include complete printer failure or power failure. After you fix a printer fault, the print request that was active when the fault occurred begins printing in one of three ways:

• Starts printing from the beginning

• Continues printing from the top of the page where printing stopped

• After you enable the printer, continues printing from the top of the page where the printing stopped

The LP print service requires a separate print filter to continue printing from the top of a page where the printing stopped. This print filter records the control sequences set by the default print filters. The printer uses these control sequences to track page boundaries. You will be notified by the print service if recovery cannot proceed with the specified print filter. For information about writing filters, see How to Create a New Print Filter.

If you want printing to resume immediately after a printer fault is fixed, enable the printer by using the enable command.

The following table lists the fault recovery values you can set for a printer with the lpadmin -F command.

Table 5–4 Values for Printer Fault Recovery

Value for -F recover-options	Description
beginning	After a fault recovery, printing restarts from the beginning of the file.
continue	After a fault recovery, printing starts at the top of the page where the printing stopped. This recovery option requires a print filter.
wait	After a fault recovery, printing stops until you enable the printer. After you enable the printer with the enable command, printing starts at the top of the page where printing stopped. This recovery option requires a print filter.