Print Mail Freezing

Hi,

We have been having issues with our OpenVPMS slowing down and pretty much freezing recently. We have been trying to figure out what is causing the issue and I think I've figured it out today. But it seems like an unusual issue.

These were the steps that happened:

In a patient Invoice -> Print -> Mail

At this point, it says Please Wait and doesn't do anything. If you refresh browser it will go back to the Invoice page but happens again if press Print -> Mail

While it was still on the Please Wait screen, I logged into administrator and restarted the Print Spooler. Instantly the Mail template fixed and was able to work again.

Would there be a reason restarting the Print Spooler would fix the email in OpenVPMS? Is creating a PDF within an email send something to the server that then freezes the Print Spooler?

Sorry if this is a dumb question.

Greta

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Re: Print Mail Freezing

I don't know why restarting the Print Spooler would affect things.

Print -> Mail generates a PDF using the Invoice JasperReport template.

Can you print the invoice without it freezing?

If you have an email template attached, it will also merge that. If the email template is an OpenOffice or Word document, then OpenOffice will be called. Can you preview patient letters without it freezing?

 

Re: Print Mail Freezing

Hi Tim,

I thought it was weird that the Print Spooler would affect things, but it's the only thing I can pinpoint.

When we were having the issue, once refreshing the browser and back in the invoice we could print ->Preview fine. I'm not sure about printing straight out though, I didn't try that. I will try when it happens again.

Our invoice email template merged after the print spooler was restarted. It is a PDF document that is in the email template, but is called from and OpenOffice document.

This might be a side issue completely, but recently I have had to delete terminals as the firefox.exe process on the terminal can't be cancelled and therefore we can't use it. I am pretty sure you helped me once with this issue, but couldn't remember what to do, so I just deleted the terminal log-in and created a new one.

Thanks,

Greta

 

Re: Print Mail Freezing

I suspect it might be related to OpenOffice. This is can only process one print/merge job at a time, so if it is getting stuck on the print spooler, everyone else's print/merge job is blocked.

You could try restarting OpenOffice on the server to see if that resolves the problem.

Re: Print Mail Freezing

Hi Tim,

Do I just go to Task Manager -> Processes and End Process "soffice.exe *32" that is being used by OpenVPMS? How do I start it again? Will it just automatically start when someone tries to use it in any OpenVPMS instance?

Re: Print Mail Freezing

Do End Process soffice.bin first. The soffice.exe should terminate automatically. If not, then terminate it as well.

It will be restarted when OpenVPMS next goes to use it.

Re: Print Mail Freezing

I have dealt with a very similar problem where a system had no default printer.  Instead it was defaulting to the Microsoft XPS printer...which cannot be run without user input(in requests a filename) hence it would lock up.  

This would occur and then block openoffice pdf generation for any further doc.

The above fixes the issue but doesn't stop it from reoccurring.

We solved our issue by setting up a null file printer and setting that as default 

 

Regards
 
Ben 
OpenVPMS Installer and Helper 
Ph: +61423044823 
Email: info[at]charltonit.com[dot]au
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