The print Spooler is a special process that manages access to printers by multiple users. The Spooler is used by the operating system to control all tape drives, diskette drives, and printers that are connected to the system. The Spooler puts reports that are to be printed into a form queue, where they wait to be printed on specified printers. The Spooler also handles requests for multiple copies of a file, use of special forms, and device-specific formatting.
The Spooler runs as a separate phantom process, a process that is not linked or attached to any line. The Spooler is always the last process on the system. For example, if 12 user processes have been configured, the Spooler will run on the 13th process, which is process 12 (the first process on the system is process 0).
The Spooler process starts 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 to start 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 manner in which user processes are allocated.
See the Guide to mvBase Files and Accounts for additional information about the :FILELOAD and :STARTSPOOLER commands.
See Also
Understanding the Print Spooler