Long running spool processes "Waiting for spool server"

[Former Member]

Hello SAP Experts,

We are experiencing long waits while printing a sapscript form. The spool shows 'Waiting' in SP01for up to 15 minutes, and eventually prints.

The spool event details show the bulk of the time is in the very first step:

Message: Print request 62350/1 created

Time: 11/23/2009 03:10:12

Job status: Waiting for spool server

Error class: Information

Area: R/3 spool

Printout: Not printed

Message recognitionSAP-T100 / PO 521

Here, you can see that step took 9 minutes to process.

Date Time Class Area Job Status Printout

11/23/2009 03:19:29 Information R/3 spool Possibly printed

11/23/2009 03:19:29 Information R/3 spool Completed Possibly printed

11/23/2009 03:19:29 Information R/3 spool Not printed

11/23/2009 03:19:29 Information Data transfer Waiting in host spoo Not printed

11/23/2009 03:19:23 Information R/3 format Formatting Not printed

11/23/2009 03:19:23 Information R/3 format Formatting Not printed

11/23/2009 03:19:23 Information R/3 spool Formatting Not printed

11/23/2009 03:10:12 Information R/3 spool Waiting for spool se Not printed

My question is, what is that step doing? We cannot replicate the issue. We'll reprint it, and it will print within seconds.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

For the message "Waiting for spool server", there can be two reasons for

this:

1. Availability of spool processes.

2. Missing commits in the application program that creates the spool.

1. Check if it is possible to increase the spool processes per server to at

least 3 and possibly more. Please see the following Note:

108799 - How many spool work processes for each instance?

You can increase the number of spool processes by setting parameter e.g.

'rdisp/wp_no_spo = 4'. The number of spool processes available for

Frontend printing is set by parameter 'rdisp/wp_no_spo_Fro_max'.

If you are printing a lot of documents via Frontend printers(e.g.LOCL),

you may need to also increase parameter 'rdisp/wp_no_spo_Fro_max'.

2. For the problem of missing commits in the application, please see

the following Note:

529966 - Long waiting times for print output (for example, with RFC)

Spool work processes only begin their work when they are informed by a

commit work from the application.

This can be done by an exlicit commit work in the program or by an

automatic commit work which is been done at the end of the program

As long there was no commit work, a spool work process does not know

about this new request.

An additional problem when creating the spool request via RFC is that

there no automatic commit is performed so the spool work process is not

informed at all.

Here an additional feature takes place:

Every server is scanning the spool database if there are forgotton

print requests (normally every 20 minutes, see eg: attached Note #65109)

Then it will also find these requests.

This could explain even long timegaps of 20-30 minutes. If this is the

RFC problem normally a simple workaround by including this exlicit

exlicit commit work in the application program should help.

[Former Member · Accepted solution]

We are investigating the commits. In my 10 years of SAP experience, I've never 'had' to commit statement at the end of a sapscript form. Weird.

As for the spool processes, we have around 25 and they are not all being fully utilized.

Thanks for the input. OSS has provided similar info - hopefully the commits will resolve the issue.

[Former Member]

HI

Take help of your ABAPer and BASIS team to check spool server.