[vox-tech] postscript printer problem

[vox-tech@lists.lugod.org]

On Mon, May 06, 2002 at 02:45:15PM -0700, Henry House wrote:
> I'm very reluctant to re-boot the machine unless I know that
> there is a fix for the problem in a newer kernel 

  You never did say which version of the kernel you are running, please
report.

I found the following while doing routine web crawling that had nothing to
do with your problem, I can't tell if it applies due to version omission:

http://www.atnf.csiro.au/people/rgooch/linux/docs/kernel-newsflash.html
# Archive of problems for kernel 2.4.12
# The parallel port driver was broken in this "emergency" release. Grab
# the pre-patch: 2.4.13-pre1

> since this machine is used interactively by people who don't like it
> when their processes dissappear ;-).

  A proper way of handling this is:

shutdown -r +2880 "Having printer problems need to upgrade kernel"

  This will warn everyone logged with the message above several times
over the 48 hours, then will automatically reboot the machine.  I would 
change the time to be some length that you think is good notice, and
set it to be some time you will be around to baby sit the machine in
case it has trouble rebooting.
  If some user actually has a reason to keep the machine up (like Pete
hasn't implemented the freeze/thaw code in his processes on that
machine) then they can complain to you in email and you stop the
"shutdown -c" and pick a better time.