Large cups systems?

[Kurt Pfeifle]

Seth Galitzer wrote:

>> What does 'grep -E "RIPCache|RIP_MAX_CACHE" /var/log/cups/error_log*'
>> return?
> 
> D [15/Oct/2007:16:08:32 -0500] [Job 2018] envp[19]="RIP_MAX_CACHE=8m"
> 
> (repeated a couple of times with different job numbers)
> 
>> You may be able to get some better performance for larger print jobs
>> if you set "RIPCache 100m" in your cupsd.conf (instead of the default
>> value of 8m).
> 
> What would be an appropriate setting?  Is 100m reasonable for typical
> jobs, ie jobs that typically are less than 10MB?  I'll have to grep my
> logs and see what kind of file size I've been processing.


The RIPCache value limits the RAM used by any CUPS RIP filter running.
It is mainly there to tell CUPS to be nice to other processes on the
system, and not take too much resources. If you *do* have the RAM,
there's no problem setting setting it to a higher value.

For the default value of RIPCache, I've seen jobs failing to print com-
plete page images on certain types of raster printers. Setting a higher
value helped. It also can speed up your printing overall.

[....]

>         lpq command = %p

That's a bug in Samba. You can work around it by adding a line
to smb.conf saying

          lpq command = ""

(shouldn't have any influence on your problem, though).


> I didn't realize those Browse values weren't standard.  They are
> corrected now.  Yes, this is a VMWare VM.  The host is also Gentoo
> Linux, running VMWare Server 1.0.3.44356.  This guest VM has a 10GB
> (3.8GB free) virtual disk and 2GB RAM. 

That doesn't matter at all if the hosting OS machine (the physical
one) has little or no RAM/disk space left.

So what do these two commands give back on your *host* Gentoo?

  df -h
  cat /proc/meminfo

?

You should indeed grab the next few spoolfiles which provoke a "hanging
job" and save them to somewhere else, and note down the target printers,
the job settings used, etc.

(The files will be in the original format as received by CUPS, prior to
any filtering being applied).

Then you can use these to try and reproduce the problem. You can also
see if the files would print if you sent them to a different printer
(model).

-- 
Kurt Pfeifle
System & Network Printing Consultant ---- Linux/Unix/Windows/Samba/CUPS
Infotec Deutschland GmbH  .....................  Hedelfinger Strasse 58
A RICOH Company  ...........................  D-70327 Stuttgart/Germany