How do you print from SAP to Networkprinters ?

[Former Member]

What is the prefered (best) way to print from SAP on i5/OS ?

Hi together,

I know all the discussions about printing.

I have read a lot of notes and I know about the difficulties to "U" and "S".

How do you spool to the printers?

"U" is not good, I know.

"C" is also not good, if the remote printer doesn't work fine. So always a operator has to take care that the printqueues are working.

We now plan to get "U" to a Windows print-server with all the printer Queues. This makes it possible for the enduser to look at the spooling queue, when the printer is the same, which is installed to his computer.

How do you sppol from SAP to Networkprinters?

Best regards,

Carsten Schulz

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Carsten,

most of my customers are "just" using U (the very bad option) !

=> It mostly runs very stable, is easy to configure and everybody is happy. If one or two printers per company do have issues, these ones are fixed with C or in exceptional cases with U to a Windows print server.

If you use Windows print servers anyway, this is a pretty fine option

You just should make a decision if you want to install the Unix print services from Microsoft or perhaps better SAPsprint from SAP. Then you can use the preferred option S instead of U and you are better supported by SAP.

If you use your printer as LPR in Windows, be aware of the famous "feature" of MS:

Key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\LPDSVC\lpr

Name: UseNonRFCSourcePorts

Type: REG_DWORD

Values: 0 = uses the Ports 721-731 only (that is the default if this key is missing) !!!!

1 = uses the available Ports 1024 - 65535

=> MS knowledge base 179156:

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/179156

This caused 4 (?) minutes print delays at several of my customers, switching to Windows print servers ...

Regards

Volker Gueldenpfennig, consolut international ag

http://www.consolut.net - http://www.4soi.de - http://www.easymarketplace.de

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi,

It mostly runs very stable

yes exactly this is the problem at our site. We use very much single HP printers with networkcard in it. Sometimes we have problems to get the printing out.

We are printing to differnet countries direktly from R/3, and as written in note 19706 networkprinter with "U" are perfomacekillers.

So I want to know, what is the best way to print from a SAP installation which is on "IBM i" ??

best regards,

Carsten Schulz

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Carsten,

it is not that big question for "IBM i" ....

Performance Killer ?

Cannot believe that !!!

What I can believe, that you print outs are delayed, but the overall performance on System i should still be ok ...

=> You could (and should) increase the number of SPO WPs - they cost more or less nothing and then in my customer environments, it is working fine again ....

Regards

Volker Gueldenpfennig, consolut international ag

http://www.consolut.net - http://www.4soi.de - http://www.easymarketplace.de

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Volker,

search in the note 19706 for the Block beginning with "A characteristic of network access types 'U' and 'S' ..."

There is shown a possibility that S-Printers are effecting to all printers, also the C-Printers.

We recognize that some Spools in SAP are waiting for <F5> (pink) and if you doubleklick on the Status then you can see "Incorrect (Reason unknown)" to some spools. Not to all.

And if I know it right, these spools have never printed out.

But we want to print automaticly from one program to different printer over the plant. And the traget printer and the person who waits for the printed paper, do not know when the print is coming.

We must be shure that all spools are printing without some operator action.

best regards,

Carsten Schulz

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Carsten,

the you should now test, if this problem is all over your printers or only to a few ones (which is my expectation). Then you could start changing these few ones to other strategies like U or S to Windows or C or whatever ...

Regards

Volker Gueldenpfennig, consolut international ag

http://www.consolut.net - http://www.4soi.de - http://www.easymarketplace.de

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

Hi Volker,

the first problem is to detemine which printers are effected to a hanging problem.

If I change teh hanging devices to 'C' than I have perhaps some more operation overhead, if the remote print queue will not work proper. And we have tested remote 'queue'ing on our SAP iSeries als well as on our not SAP iSeries. We have several hangups to remote printqueues a week.

And to find the printers who causes the spool-workprocess long waiting times, I have no idea how to do this.

Especialy when I read this note:

A characteristic of network access types 'U' and 'S' is that any network problems lead directly to the spool work process being interrupted. This interferes with the processing of print requests, with the consequence that printers which are not driven by a network access type but still linked to the same spool work process are also affected.

(from Note 19706 Version 19 english.)

And for the second: I think there is a difference from running an CI on iSeries or Windows. Because, if I use Windows as operatingsystem then I can use 'C' for using SAPSprint and on iSeries I need to use 'S' or 'U' to use a Windows printserver, or not?

best regards,

Carsten Schulz