Setting HPDPS Environment Variables

Setting the PATH Environment Variable

During the installation process, HPDPS updates the HP-UX PATH environment variable definition in /etc/PATH to include the directory location of the HPDPS executable files; HPDPS appends :/opt/pd/bin to the paths already specified.

Users can use the following format to allow their PATH value to append the paths specified in the /etc/PATH file:

PATH=$PATH:/path1:/path2

Setting the PD_CONFIRM_DELETE Environment Variable

The PD_CONFIRM_DELETE environment variable enables or disables a confirmation message for the pdclean, pddelete, and pdrm commands. Possible values are no and yes. The default value is yes - HPDPS will display a confirmation message before processing a delete request. No confirmation messages will display if you set the value to no. Under normal conditions, you will not want to change the default value.

If, however, you decide to set the value of PD_CONFIRM_DELETE to no, edit your .profile file and add the line:

export PD_CONFIRM_DELETE=no

To set the value of the PD_CONFIRM_DELETE environment variable for the duration of your login session only, enter:

export PD_CONFIRM_DELETE=no

at the command line.

Setting the PDPRINTER Environment Variable

The PDPRINTER environment variable identifies the default logical printer. Defining a default logical printer allows your users to submit jobs without specifying a logical printer name. Defining a default logical printer also allows you to perform certain configuration tasks without specifying the logical printer name. For example, to set the default value of the PDPRINTER to LogPrt1, edit the system-wide /etc/.profile file and add the line:

export PDPRINTER=LogPrt1

Users can set a different default logical printer in their individual .profile file by editing this file and adding a line such as

export PDPRINTER=LogPrt4

Tuning Load Handling Using HPDPS Environment Variables

The PD_MAXTHREADS environment variable, which is a systemwide environment variable, allows you to specify a limit on the number of simultaneous command threads in the client daemon. Each thread takes up memory resources and this prevents the daemon from running out of memory. Once it hits the limit, it will ignore new requests until a thread frees up. (The default is 50 if PD_MAXTHREADS is not otherwise set.) PD_MAXTHREADS is read only at invocation of pdclientd.

The PD_MAXRETRIES and PD_RETRY_INTERVAL environment variables, which can be modified within each individual user's own environment, can be used to keep a command from quitting prematurely in this situation. Refer to the HP Distributed Print Service User's Guide for more information on environment variables.

For example, suppose that one expects that the highest number of simultaneous HPDPS requests to be 100 (perhaps after some batch reports complete), and that the HPDPS throughput for this particular system is measured to be around 1 job/sec. Since PD_MAXTHREADS defaults to 50, the first 50 requests will be taken immediately and the rest must wait. It will take 50 seconds for 50 new threads to free up for the rest of the jobs. Since PD_RETRY_INTERVAL defaults to 5 seconds, each waiting command will try again every 5 seconds. The longest a job will wait is 50 seconds divided by 5 second intervals, or for 10 retries. You should add one more retry in case it just missed.

So in this example, PD_MAXRETRIES should be set to 11.This will set an upper limit of about 55 seconds as to how long a command can take before it returns with success or an error message.

Summary of Other Environment Variables

The following table summarizes other environment variables.