Tom Peters wrote:
At 08:35 PM 5/31/2006 -0700, Chris Carlen wrote:
Well my problem is very strange. I can't print to a new Ricoh CL7200 printer. It appears to be networking related, as if I try to ftp a print job to it, the transfer stalls. FTPing the same job to it from another machine (Win2k) on the same subnet works Ok. But the networking on this Linux box in all other respects seems fine. Furthermore, if I take the NIC from the Win2k machine, and put it in the Linux machine, then the Linux machine can also print fine.
I will thus be interested in finding an alternative 100baseFX NIC to try.
I am also not sure if there is something screwey about the printer's networking. But I at least must get the ability to print, and since everyone else can print to it (the Windows world) I am unfortunately stuck with having to focus suspicions on the Linux box and/or its hardware.
I have had difficulties with the NIC initially having to use an option to force it to use the fiber transceiver. Autonegotiate doesn't work. Dunno if this is the hub's fault or not. Hopefully I will get support from a Linux tech. soon. But usually they know only a tiny fraction of what I already know, and I wind up tutoring them.
Doesn't sound much like the NIC is at fault. Can the Linux machine access other resources on this network? If it can hit some and not others, its subnet mask might be set wrong. If you can't ping any other box on the network, the address might be wrong and you might be on a different subnet.
Can you ping the printer's IP address?
Yes, of course. Let me clarify: I can actually print, when a small job is sent such as less than 50k .ps files. Larger files stall in the transfer. I can ping the printer, view its web page, ftp to it and open a connection, begin a transfer, then it slowly degrades to a stall condition. When I originally set up the printer in Yast, I could print the ASCII and graphical test pages, but not the one with the photo. This led me on a wild goose chase thinking the printer's .ps interpreter was broken. Check this out: http://linuxprinting.org/forums.cgi?group=linuxprinting.ricoh.general When I discovered that I could ftp files directly to the printer, then I tried ftping the .ps from the Yast with photo test page from the Win2k machine, which printed fine. At that point I discovered that the problem wasn't about the .ps interpreter at all, but something about networking.
Can other machines ping you?
Yes. The printer, my Linux machine, and the Win2k machine are all on 134.252.41.* . All PCs can ping each other and can ping the printer. Like I said, the Linux PC can print to the printer using the NIC from the Win2k machine. That NIC is on the same network, but there is a possibility that settings in the hub are causing some problems. But the key is that ONLY printing to the printer stalls. No other network activity shows signs of problems from the Linux PC. Actually, another thing I'd like to try is to ftp something to somewhere else, to see if there is a problem sending large amounts of stuff from my PC.
Run ifconfig at the command line and capture the results for us.
Ok, if you like: mango2:/home/crcarle # ifconfig eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:04:76:CC:88:46 inet addr:134.252.41.24 Bcast:134.252.41.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::204:76ff:fecc:8846/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:3447 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:978 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:741950 (724.5 Kb) TX bytes:72113 (70.4 Kb) Interrupt:3 Base address:0xb000 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:42 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:42 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:2708 (2.6 Kb) TX bytes:2708 (2.6 Kb) Other possibilities: There is a media converter on the printer to convert from fibers to 100baseTX. I have now experimented with a wide variety of settings on the printer and media converter. What is completely demoralizing is that once I achieved a successful transfer of >100kB/s with the printer set to 10Mbps full duplex, with compatible settings on the converter. I thought it was fixed, and now when I attempt the same transfer, it stalls again. Oh I just found something! I have two .ps files: crcarle@mango2:~> ll sm?.ps -rw-r--r-- 1 crcarle users 910109 2006-05-31 14:11 smc.ps -rw-r--r-- 1 crcarle users 372489 2006-05-31 14:11 smq.ps The large one transfers Ok! The small one stalls. This leads me to suspect that there is something about the printer which stalls when trying to parse the postscript. When it is choking on the .ps, it fails to process network IO. To make matters worse, the data gets corrupted during the stalling so that even if I wait it out and complete the transfer (I once let it sit all night transferring 600kB, which completed but printed postscript stack errors) the results are not good. This is very unfortunate. I leads me to think that there is a slim chance of getting this printer to work with Linux, when most of the .ps files generated by Linux choke the printer. And Ricoh told me the interpreter is written by Adobe. :-( Thanks for your input. -- Good day! ________________________________________ Christopher R. Carlen Principal Laser&Electronics Technologist Sandia National Laboratories PO Box 969 MS 9053 Livermore, CA 94550 USA crcarle@sandia.gov (925) 294-1562 (925) 294-1004 [fax] -- Check the headers for your unsubscription address For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com