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 material as you can.
PDFing will run on Windows 95/98 and Windows NT4/2000/XP/2003.
TCP/IP must be installed & configured. Users of Windows 95 may
need to update their TCP/IP software to WinSock2.
PDFing can convert
*SCS,
*USERASCII and
*AFPDS spooled-files.
*IPDS spooled-files are
not supported.
When TCP/IP is installed with Windows 2000 and 2003 the TCP/IP Print Server
service is automatically started. This service also uses 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".
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What does OS400 message "Remote host system rejected the open attempt" mean?
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 PDFing has not been started on the PC or,
more exceptionally, that 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.
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Why does the spooled-file stay at status: RDY for so long?
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.
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, check the network status, using
NETSTAT *CNN on the AS/400 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 should run just as well.
Your AS400/iSeries 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.
Windows 95 users have also reported this problem and for Win95 the solution
is to upgrade the TCP/IP stack to WINSOCK2. The upgrade
is available from the Microsoft website as a patch named "Windows Socket 2 Update"
(WS2SETUP.EXE). Install this patch and the problem will be fixed.
Large AFPDS spooled-files may take a very long time to be "transformed" by the
AS/400. 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 AS400 sub-system
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 AS/400 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.
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,
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.
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.
PDFing cannot find the email server you specified on the [System] page
of the configuration form. You should check the host-name/IP address
and the port-number used by your email server.
You will see this message if the host cannot be found or the email server
is not "listening" on the specified port. 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.
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.
Frequently Asked Questions about PDFing