Papercut: users getting constant reconnecting message after tapping at printer

[Zussed]

Hi

 

We are refreshing our entire estate of printers with new Ricohs. We previously had a high proportion of Ricoh printers and a Papercut version that was upgraded last year, so fairly new.

We didn't expect major issues but we are half through rolling out and a high number of users are getting a message of 'trying to connect to ' that never resolves.

Engineers have seen this before but not at the volume we are getting.

Given it's the same network and server environment as before, that leaves us with Papercut configuration differences that we aren't aware of, or maybe subtle changes in the latest NICs.

We have two parts of the network with legacy switches and new switches and VLANs but the issue is across both.

 

Anyone ever experienced this or have any suggestions at all?

 

TIA

[dapaulio]

No but I’m sure I had to poke holes on the windows server firewall for comms between mf server and mf devices.

 

For test purposes if you disable the server firewall does it stabile the connection

[PaperCutterBrenda]

Hi there Zussed, PaperCutter Brenda here! Just confirming that you have a PaperCut Partner assisting with this rollout? With these types of issues, they should collect logs, screenshots, etc., and escalate those to our team. If that's not happening, please let us know at [email protected] and we'll try to help out!

[robintech]

Sometimes I had to re-enter and apply the Device's admin username/password in Papercut when they lost contact or just change something and Apply it, only needed to do it once though.

[DGardiner]

could try increasing the memory allocation to java

[Zussed]

Thanks Brenda.

It's Ricoh UK and the support is poor. There are many issues we've had to try and sort ourselves and they won't let us see any calls they log with you. We suspect they don't log them in lost cases.

They are going down the wireshark route which is very last ditch if you get to that point. I did try your support but was told to go through the Partner.

[psydii]

I'd say going to wireshark is a pretty early troubleshooting technique if you've got the skills to decode it. There is lots of quirky stuff that is easily visible, and I've spotted many a config error by seeing where packets are going, not going, take an unexpetably long time to get a response or have the wrong auth settings. Never needed to do it with Papercut mind, but then we use Sharp.

 

One thought though is are any of the new devices connected to switches that have power saving enabled? is it possible that the ports are powering down and not coming back on fast enough for the software on the MFDs liking? (might be the nic on the MFD that's powering down..?) Also going back to wireshark for a moment, I've seen intermittent loops and broadcast storms take out phones while not having any apparent effect on desktop pc's, so might be worth taking a look at what is going on in the vlan(s) hosting the printers and Papercut server.

 

Final thought... what AV system is running on the papercut server - there is usually a network traffic inspection element, this could be going interfering?

[pklump]

Have you tried logging with the administrator credentials of the MFPs, and then going back into to the embedded PaperCut software to view the settings? When the embedded software is running when you're logged in as admin, you should see the phrase "admin" in a light font in the right portion of the touchscreen. You should be able to view the configuration of the PaperCut embedded software to make sure you don't have a typo or other error in the config.

 

I assume that you're able to ping these MFPs from hosts on your network, are you able to run a ping test from one of the MFPs to other hosts on your network, perferably your PaperCut app server? Ricoh can change where this test is located in the menus, but I found this video that gives an example of this process: