PDFing Home PageFrequently Asked Questions about PDFing
This list is provided to help you with some common questions asked by users of PDFing. If you cannot find the answer you seek here, please e-mail: support@pdfing.com providing as much supporting evidence as you can.


What does "Port 515" in use mean ? What other applications use port 515?
I have started a remote-writer on an output-queue, why does the spooled-file stay at status: SND?
I can ping the PC from OS400, why do spooled-files still stay at status: SND?
Has a "Firewall" closed the port: 515 ?
What does OS400 message "Remote host system rejected the open attempt" mean?
What does PDFing message "9997 - No data read from LPR connection" mean?
What does PDFing message "9995 - Read time-out expired" mean?
PDFing receives spooled-files, but why does the spooled-file stay at status: RDY for so long?
Why do strange characters appear in the text of *SCS spooled-files?
Why do strange characters appear in the text of *AFPDS spooled-files?
Why are graphic overlays not aligned correctly with text in *AFPDS spooled-files?
Why are graphic overlays missing from *AFPDS spooled-files?
I have sent an *AFPDS spooled-file to PDFing, why is the PDF document totally unreadable?
Why does Acrobat Reader report "Error processing page"?
Why are the user-print-information tags ignored?
Why are the user-print-information tags truncated?
Why are the user-print-information tags mis-translated?
Why are the user-defined-data tags ignored?
Why are files not "saved" correctly, using the NT Service version?
Why are files not printed correctly, using the NT Service version?
Will PDFing automatically dial my ISP?
Will PDFing require me to start Outlook to send e-mails?
Will PDFing require me to start the mail server on OS400?
What does message: "Cannot Connect to SMTP server: x" mean?
Has "anti-virus" software closed the SMTP port??
What does message: "SMTP server: x did not respond within time-out period" mean?
What does message: "vSock write-error" mean?
What does message: "Sending [10053] Software caused connection abort" mean?
Why does PDFing report "Relaying not allowed"?
Why can't MS Exchange send my spooled-files as emails?
Why can't PDFing save files to a "network" drive? What platforms can run PDFing?
What type of spooled-files can PDFing convert?


When TCP/IP is installed with Windows 2000 and 2003 the TCP/IP Print Server service is automatically started. This service also "listens" on port: 515 and thus will not allow PDFing to run! Unless you are using this service to print files sent from UNIX machines, you can safely stop this service and change the start-up options to manual. Use the Services applet in the Control Panel to stop this service and then change its start up options to "manual".


The OS400 remote-writer writer will wait until PDFing (or any other remote printer) starts to "listen" on TCP/IP port: 515. If PDFing is started, you should check that the TCP/IP address assigned to the output-queue being written is the same as the address assigned to the PC on which PDFing is running.
You can check to see whether OS400 can "ping" this PC.  If you can ping the PC from OS400 and PDFing is running, a "firewall" may be blocking incoming packets on port: 515.


If you can ping the PC from OS400 and PDFing is running, a "firewall" may be blocking incoming packets on port: 515.


PDFing "listens" on port: 515 for requests by OS400 to send spooled-files, but "fire-walls" between OS400 and the PC running PDFing may block port: 515. You must add an exception to these fire-walls for programs: PDFing.exe and PDFingMailer.exe that allows these programs to open port: 515.
You can check the network status, using NETSTAT *CNN on OS400 and netstat -n on the PC. If all else fails, it is "just" possible that OS400 is not functioning correctly. You can test OS400 by using another implementation of a Windows LPD server. I can heartily recommend the MochaSoft W32 LPD program. If you can get W32 LPD running well on your PC, then PDFing will run just as well.


You may see this message after executing the OS400 command SNDTCPSPLF. Generally this means that port: 515 on the PC to which the spooled-file is directed is not open. This may be because either PDFing has not been started on the PC, or, a "firewall" is blocking incoming packets on this port.
Please be aware that the "second-level" text of this error message refers to TELNET support, however this is misleading and should really be understood as referring to LPD support.


OS400 is not sending all the spooled-file data. This sometimes occurs because the output-queue is configured incorrectly. End the writer and check the resulting job-log for that writer to see which errors have occured.
Sometimes PDFing is connected to by a host that is not using the LPR/LPD protocol. You can open the "control-file" for the problem job (using notepad) and look for the connecting host-name or IP address. If it is not a connection from your AS400/iSeries system, you should find out why this particular host is trying to connect to PDFing and then prevent it trying to connect in future.
When you start an OS400 "remote-writer" (STRRMTWTR) this starts a writer job in the QSPL sub-system for user: QSPLJOB with the same name as the output-queue. If you can locate this job, then you can view the job-log. If you end the remote-writer ENDWTR  OPTION(*IMMED) then the job-log will be written to a spooled-file and can be viewed by executing: WRKSPLF SELECT(QSPLJOB). The *ESCAPE and *DIAG messages in the job log will give us a clue about the cause of these problems.

For instance, *ESCAPE message CPF6DF9 is sent when our transform-exit program cannot convert a "complex" *AFPDS spooled-file because the specified output buffer canot contain all the data converted to PCL. An "advanced" transform-exit program is also available that has no buffer-size limitations. 


Large AFPDS spooled-files may take a very long time to be "transformed" by the OS400. You may configure the "LPD Job Time Out" parameter to wait for any number of minutes. The default is 10 minutes, you should experiment with longer intervals.
You may also need to increase the storage allocated to the QSPL sub-system on OS400


LPR requires that you configure the local host and domain names for your AS400 system as it sends this information to PDFing with each spooled-file. If these are not configured correctly, OS400 will perform a "reverse DNS look up" for this information, which will cause a considerable delay when sending each spooled-file.
Use OS400 command CFGTCP option 12 to to configure the host and domain names. Use option 10 to add the host and the fully qualified network names of your AS400 system to the host table.


You may need to change the translation-table that PDFing uses to convert EBCDIC to ASCII. By default PDFing will use the translation table for code-page 37 but you can change the table used to translate all or any particular spooled-file. Please see our national-language web-page for more details.


If only certain characters are represented incorrectly, you may need to change the translation-table that OS400 host-print transform uses to convert EBCDIC to ASCII. Please see our workstation-customisation web-page for more details.
If the font used for the text that is shown incorrectly is a "soft-font" which is downloaded with the spooled-file, this font may be encoded in EBCDIC rather than ASCII. If so, then the text will look rather odd as blanks will be replaced by @ signs, etc. To make the text readable, go to the [Convert] page of the configuration or markup program and enter the text: -RA in the control labelled "PCL Parameters". This parameter value causes the text in these fonts to be rendered as readable bit-maps. It is best to apply this "PCL Parameter" value as selectively as possible, as it has the effect of increasing the PDF file-size and the text rendered in these (downloaded) fonts can no longer be searched.


This problem may occur when the page-size is not quite big enough to accomodate the text. The IBM-supplied host-print transform will do its best to make the text fit, but this sometimes results in lines and columns of text being omitted. The solution is to provide your own work-station customisation object. See our work-station customisation web-page for details.
Please note, that all OS400 PTFs must be up to date, particularly those for printing systems. Many of the problems that our customers have reported were resolved by the application of the latest PTFs and the use of MFRTYPMDL(*HP4).


This problem may occur when the spooled-file has been sent using our utility command SNDPDFSPLF. If the printer-device-file does not specify the library containing the overlay explicitly and the overlay object is not in the library-list of the job executing SNDPDFSPLF, then the spooled-file sent to PDFing does not contain the overlay.
It seems that if you cannot ensure that the library containing the overlay is in the library-list of the job executing SNDPDFSPLF, then you must specify the library name of the overlay when creating or changing the printer-device file.


If the document was converted from an *AFPDS spooled-file, you should check that you have configured the OS400 output-queue to perform host print transform correctly. Please see Configuring output-queues for *AFPDS spooled-files.
Please note, that all OS400 PTFs must be up to date, particularly those for printing systems. Many of the problems that our customers have reported were resolved by the application of the latest PTFs and the use of MFRTYPMDL(*HP4).


This error may occur when converting very large *AFPDS spooled files. In this case you will need to adjust the configuration of PDFing. Go to the [Convert] page of the configuration program and enter the text: -R:800 in the control labelled "PCL Parameters" This parameter value increases the size of the internal buffers used by PDFing to 800kb and should allow it to process large spooled-files correctly.


You should check that your OS400 output-queue, has the correct destination-options configured. The parameter should be DESTOPT(*USRDFNTXT) See configuring an OS400 output-queue for further details. You can use option 8 from WRKSPLF to check the user-defined-text attribute of the spooled-file. Please note that spooled-files created before user-print-information is set are not affected and their user-defined-text attribute will not be changed.
User-print-information is never sent by OS400 command SNDTCPSPLF, however, you may specify tags in the DESTOPT() parameter of this command.


Because each tag in the user-defined-text attribute must be terminated by a space, included spaces are not allowed within the tag. You may include spaces but the tag-value must be URL encoded.


Please see our national language web-page.


You should check that your OS400 output-queue, has the correct destination-type configured. The parameter should be DESTTYPE(*OS400). See configuring an OS400 output-queue for further details. You can use option 8 from WRKSPLF to check the user-defined-data attribute of the spool-file. Please note that the transform process removes all the spooled-file's attributes, excepting file-name, user-name and user-defined-text. See configuring an OS400 output-queue for information on the "transform-exit-program" that will preserve these attributes.
When using OS400 command SNDTCPSPLF, please make sure that you have set the destination type parameter to DESTTYP(*AS400)


If you ask PDFing to copy files to another drive name and that drive is mapped on to another PC, the mapping will only be available for certain users. Because the default log-on for the NT service is the "system account" it will not be able to find this drive.
If you want to continue using "mapped" drives, then you can change the NT service log-on from the "services" control-panel applet. However, the best solution is to use the Microsoft UNC naming convention: \\ComputerName\SharedFolder\Resource, rather than the drive:directory convention.


This may be because the printing preferences set up for a particular printer are ignored when PDFing runs as a service. Because the default log-on for the NT service is the "system account" and it will not find any printing preferences set up by another user-account.
You can change the NT service log-on from the "services" control-panel applet, so that PDFing can find the printing-preferences set by the same user account.


No, you will have to make the connection yourself. However you have the option to delay sending e-mail, until you are ready.


No, PDFing uses the SMTP internet protocol to talk to your mail server directly.


You can use any SMTP mail-server on any platform. If you do not want PDFing to use the AS400/iSeries mail-server, you do not need to start it.


You will see this message if a SMTP mail-server is not "listening" on the specified host-name and port. You can specify a different SMTP host-name and port on the [System] page of the configutation form. You may also adjust the number of times PDFing retries the connection and the delay between retries. You should also check for anti-virus activity.


Unfortunately, SMTP port: 25 is often used by "trojans" and other malicious software to send unauthorised messages. Because of such exploits, anti-virus software running on the PC may block connections on port: 25. You may need to add an exception to the AV software for program: PDFing.exe and, if you are running PDFing as a service, you must also add an exception for program: PDFingMailer.exe
Generally speaking, a "firewall" on the PC will not block outgoing connections from a PC, but this should be checked.


You should probably increase the SMTP time out value, on the [SYSTEM] page of the configuration program. You may also adjust the number of times PDFing retries the connection and the delay between retries.


You should probably increase the SMTP time out value, on the [SYSTEM] page of the configuration program. You may also adjust the number of times PDFing retries the connection and the delay between retries.


You should probably increase the SMTP time out value, on the [SYSTEM] page of the configuration program.
The Windows SDK says: WSACONNECTION ABORTED (10053) - An established connection was aborted by the software in your host machine, possibly due to a data transmission time out or protocol error.


This message is not originated by PDFing, it is just reporting the error-message sent back to it by your email-server. If you were able to send email to outside users before, then this error message will be a consequence of changes to your email server configuration. You will need to speak to the mail server administrator. They should be able to change the server configuration to allow relaying.
To give you a little more background to this problem: SMTP mail servers can be used by anyone to relay messages and can easily be exploited by "spammers" because there is no password required. To counter these "spammers" the server notes the domain used when an SMTP client connects (this is taken from the return address) and may refuse to accept messages that are addressed to recipients with a different domain name.
PDFing now supports ESMTP authentication of clients for email server systems, this requires a "user-name" and "password" values to be configured. In almost all cases, authenticated connections allow messages to be "relayed".


By default, MS Exchange uses X400 standards for email addresses. You must assign SMTP addresses for each recipient with an exchange mail-box as well as the X400 address, before PDFing can send the email to that address.


A drive mapping is only available to the user account that established the mapping. If you ask PDFing to copy files to another drive name and the specified drive is mapped on to another system, then the mapping must be available to the user account running PDFing. Because the default log-on for the PDFing service is the "system account", the service will not be able to find any mapped drives. If you want to continue using "mapped" drives, then you can change the PDFingMailer service log-on account using the "services" control-panel applet. However, the best solution is to use the Microsoft UNC naming convention, rather than drive:directory naming.


PDFing can run on:  Windows 2000,  XP, 7, 8 and 8.1 and Server 2000, 2003, 2008, and 2012.


PDFing can convert *SCS, *USERASCII and *AFPDS spooled-files. *IPDS spooled-files are not supported. PCL data-streams (v4)  can also be sent from other operating systems that support LPD.


When you need to report a problem with PDFing, we ask you to send us the LP*.lpr and LP*.con files for the problem spooled-file. These files will be in sub-folder: \PFing\Queue\Control. You can use the [File|Open] menu option to display all of your converted spooled-files, then select the grid-line for the problem job and then select the [Properties | Files] menu option to view all the files belonging to the problem job.
Please archive these selected files in a zip-file and send them to us by email at: support@pdfing.com. Once we have these files we can begin our diagnosis of the problem. We will then get back to you with our recommendations. If file LP*.lpr is not present, you will need to change a setting on the [Log] page of the configuration form. The "Log LPD Activity" combo-box should be set to "YES". Then re-write the spooled-file to PDFing.


This document ©Jane Hearn 2004-2014.