The Spooler is a special process used by the operating system to control all printers that are connected to the system. (It can also use the tape drive or floppy disk drive as an I/O device.) The Spooler runs as a separate phantom process - that is, a process that is not linked or attached to any line. The Spooler is always the last process on the system. For example, if 17 user processes (0 to 16) have been configured, the Spooler will run on process 16.
The Spooler process is started automatically whenever the system is coldstarted and whenever the :FILELOAD command is used to restore the data area of the disk. The :STARTSPOOLER command can be used re-initialize the Spooler without having to reboot the system. When the Spooler is started, a Process Control Block (PCB) and workspace are allocated to it in the same way as for user processes.
See Also
Reinitializing the Print Spooler
Assigning Print Spooler Specifications
Assigning a Printer to a Form Queue with the ASSIGNFQ Command
Using the Print Spooler with Backup Media