Stability and performance / RPM update 6.2.0.495

By Dave Brooks on Fri, 12/14/2018 - 13:16

We posted RPM Remote Print Manager® (“RPM”) update 6.2.0.495 on December 13, 2018.

Zero byte files

If you are experiencing any file problems at all, including zero byte files, you should consider upgrading to this version as soon as possible. We have contacted customers who were having problems with earlier updates. They report that with this update, the problems have vanished.

Stability

We were working with a customer who reported the following from the RPM event log

Jobs - 2018-12-12 08:27:50.263
data path missing for job 148690

Fortunately, the customer was able to provide another log which gave us an important clue. The files he was sending were 42 megabytes.

It was when we tested here in the office with larger files, 44MB up to 200MB and more, that we discovered the problem. Unfortunately, it was introduced in the RPM version 6.2 LPD code. We were marking the job as in progress but it was coming through as an eligible job, too soon.

Once we resolved that, we ran dozens of gigabytes of jobs through RPM without issue, including the files which demonstrated the customer problem.

Again, if you are using an earlier version of RPM, please upgrade to 6.2.0.495 as soon as you are able.

Performance improvement with many jobs

One day this past week I sent 250 thousand jobs into RPM. I noticed that after six to eight hours the throughput was lagging, and by the following morning, it was noticeably slow.

The tech guys here brainstormed with each other and came up with an idea. We implemented that and are very pleased with the results.

What RPM does now is a “database sweep” every so many jobs added. That would include jobs from any source including:

If you happen to look at the event log you might notice that RPM already does a database sweep every midnight (or close). This is one of the few database maintenance operations we can do while the RPM service is running.

Installing the update

To get your best results we prepared a primer on a few extra steps you’ll need to do when you install this update.

You can get this version by going to our downloads page or in the user interface, go to Help / Check for Updates

You are eligible to update your RPM install if your support is current.