Printer Errors!

[Mintsoft]

Howdy all

I was wondering how/if people know when their servers are having a printer error, is there someway of sending an admin alert when the fated dialog appears? (screenshot attached) It'd be ok if I was sat infront of the 2 servers all day! At the moment I just use the Print Management tool from the server 2003 Admin tools pack and look for any that have had the same job for a while.

Surely there must be a way I can get it to send a message or something to me?!?

Rob

[ChrisH]

There are tools for certain makes of printers to trap some errors. Some printers can send you emails or other you can use SNMP to poll the device for problems. All depends on the manufacturer.

[Mintsoft]

So I take it there isn't anyform of standard version that works for most printers? Its totally dependent on the make of the printer. Another problem I have had is when an error has appeared on server1/2 and I go onto the interface for the print server itself, often the printer seems fine and the error is coming from the printspooler on windows rather than the printservers. I take it SNMP wouldn't catch this style of error?

-Thanks for the response
Rob

[Geoff]

SNMP Traps are standard, as are SNMP queries.

[Mintsoft]

aha! sounds promising, OK total n00b question coming now:

is there a windows client/service or something? Google just keeps coming up with linux daemons and the only thing I can find from microsoft is the actual API for SNMP stuff. Am I missing something blatently obvious here?

[Geoff]

I use net-snmp on Linux so I can't help there. However it's been my observation SNMP monitoring on Windows = lots of money.