The printer is a piece of hardware, and like any hardware, it can get confused. For example, although most printers should be able to survive receiving non-PostScript text, some of them might have a (figurative) coughing fit and not recover until you reboot.
Rebooting the printer is usually just a matter of turning it off and on again. However, there are some printers that have more complicated procedures. If you’ve never rebooted your printer before, check with your system administrator that this is okay.
Since rebooting is considered a drastic measure, you should be very careful about doing it. Be sure of the following before you reboot:
Be careful about rebooting printers!
I don’t like to tell people that they can reboot printers. Then people start turning off printers while a job is in progress because they don’t know how to lprm it. What will happen is that the system won’t get the signal that the job completed, so when the printer comes back the whole print job is sent all over again. Which just wastes paper, and is the opposite of what the user wanted. If they turn off the printer, they should also lprm the file to avoid the job being sent a second time. | ||
| --Eric Pearce administrator | ||
The printer is really, truly hung. Remember to be patient — a large graphic could make a page take five minutes or longer to print on a printer that doesn’t have a lot of memory.
The job that the printer is hung on is your job. If someone else’s job is the one that the printer is having trouble with, then the courteous thing to do is just bring it to their attention.