IBM AIX 7.3 – Common Problem 009 – Diagnosis and Fix

📖 ~1 min read

Table of contents

1. Symptom & Impact
2. Environment & Reproduction
3. Root Cause Analysis
4. Quick Triage
5. Step-by-Step Diagnosis
6. Solution – Primary Fix
7. Solution – Alternative Approaches
8. Verification & Acceptance Criteria
9. Rollback Plan
10. Prevention & Hardening
11. Related Errors & Cross-Refs
12. References & Further Reading

Symptom & Impact

Print jobs stay in queued state and lpstat shows DEV_WAIT on the queue.

Environment & Reproduction

IBM AIX 7.3 LPAR exhibiting printer / qdaemon spooler issues under standard PowerVM workloads.

lpstat
lssrc -s qdaemon

Root Cause Analysis

qdaemon subsystem hung or backend program missing for the queue device.

Quick Triage

Confirm scope with errpt, recent changes, and subsystem state via lssrc.

lpstat -W
errpt | grep qd

Step-by-Step Diagnosis

Stop and restart qdaemon and clear the affected queue.

stopsrc -s qdaemon
startsrc -s qdaemon

Solution – Primary Fix

Restart qdaemon and re-enable the queue.

enq -G
enable myqueue

Solution – Alternative Approaches

Recreate the print queue via smit mkpq if backend program is missing.

Verification & Acceptance Criteria

Confirm subsystem returns to RUNNING state and errpt shows no new entries.

lpstat
lssrc -s qdaemon

Rollback Plan

Restore prior configuration from mksysb or alt_disk_install clone if the fix regresses.

stopsrc -s qdaemon && startsrc -s qdaemon

Prevention & Hardening

Encode the fix in NIM customisation scripts and monitor via topas/nmon.

smit chque  # standardise queue definitions

Related Errors & Cross-Refs

errpt LABEL=QDAEMON; spooler failures

Related tutorial: View the step-by-step tutorial for aix-7.3.

View all aix-7.3 tutorials on the Tutorials Hub →

Browse all common problems & solutions on the Tutorials Hub.

References & Further Reading

AIX printing and queueing subsystem