HP NonStop G-Series - Manual (Page 236)

Introduction to the Spooler
Guardian User’s Guide — 425266-001
12- 2
Why Use the Spooler?
Why Use the Spooler?
Different applications (in addition to your own) can send output to the same printer at
the same time. The spooler saves each job on the print queue and sends them to the
printer depending on their priority.
The spooler protects your applications from any device-dependent considerations. You
don’t need to know the technical specifications for each printer. For example, to print a
job on a specific printer, you only need to know the spooler location associated with the
printer (such as $S.#LP for a line printer).
Spooler Components
The spooler consists of processes, output devices, and routing structures:
Spooler Term Definition
Spooler
supervisor Process (usually named $SPLS) that monitors and communicates with the
other spooler processes and controls printing of spooler jobs. Each spooler
has one supervisor.
Collector
process Process that accepts output from applications and stores it on disk. Each
spooler must include at least one, but no more than 15, collectors.
Print process Process that retrieves a spooler job stored on disk by a collector process and
prints the job to an output device. Each printer in the spooler has one print
process associated with it; however, each print process can control several
output devices.
Device Physical device (printer), process, or virtual device to which output is
directed. Output devices are components of the system, not of the spooler.
Routing
structure Structure that directs jobs to output devices and consists of a set of
locations and print devices.
Job Set of data sent to the spooler to be printed.
Peruse Utility that lets you control and monitor your jobs. You enter Peruse
commands interactively from your terminal. See
Section 13, Managing
Your Spooler Jobs Using Peruse .
Spoolcom Utility that lets a system operator create, initialize, and get status for spooler
components, set job attributes, and start a printer that is offline. See
Section 14, Performing Routine Spooler Operations Using Spoolcom .