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Release Notes

7.0.0

New Features:

  • As of PLOSSYS Output Engine 7.0.0, SAP Spool printing has been improved to fully comply with the SAP specifications. For job notifications to work properly, BC-XOM 4.4.1 or newer is needed. On how to use it, refer to Configure Output from SAP Spool on Windows or on Linux. The following changes have been implemented:

    • The seal-co-notifier service can send job and device notifications to multiple SAP systems. (PLS-2055)

    • Masterlock of the seal-co-notifier has been abolished. Instead it is locked per rmgId (per LOMS). This enables correct horizontal scaling of the service. (PLS-2102)

    • Device notifications are supported according to the BC-XOM specification. (PLS-2106)

    • In the event of a problem with a printer, the feedback is sent to SAP in an SAP-compliant manner. This makes it clear that the problem was with the printer and not the job. (PLS-2135)

    • SAP ROMS reconfiguration settings are evaluated by the seal-co-notifier service and logged. (PLS-2137)

    • For the BC-XOM certification, job notifications have been modified according to the SAP requirements. (PLS-2138)

    • Device feedback with interval control works according to the BC-XOM specification. (PLS-2143)

    • In a cluster, multiple instances of seal-co-notifier service share their workload. For customers with several IPP or SAP systems, this results in load distribution. (PLS-2167)

    • For the seal-co-notifier service, two new service keys KV_HISTORY_SIZE and KV_STORAGE_TYPE are available to configure the NATS key-value store. (PLS-2171)

    • The seal-co-notifier service uses nwrfcsdk 7.50.15. (PLS-2172)

    • The environment key SAP_JOBNOTIFY_TIMEOUT is obsolet. Instead, you have to configure the timeout for every SAP system in the spad transaction in SAP. For more information refer to Update to 7.0.0 for Linux or Windows. (PLS-2236)

  • Pickup jobs can be recognized in PLOSSYS Administrator by the letter P next to the job icon. (PLS-1652)

  • By default, comments are now preserved when converting PDF to Postscript. To prevent this, the new environment key NO_COMMENTS is available. (PLS-2023)

  • The seal-co-notifier service provides the new Prometheus metric out_ngn_sap_function_calls_total to monitor communication with SAP. For the existing metric out_ngn_sap_notifications_total the label notification_type has been added. (PLS-2168)

  • For security reasons, Node.js has been updated to version 22.13.1. (PLS-2186)

  • For printer configuration, bos2gyros has been updated to version 1.4.1 due to Node.js version 22.13.1. (PLS-2187)

  • For container based installations distroless images are available via Github. (PLS-2191)

Bug-Fixes:

  • Sometimes BC-XOM notifications to SAP were lost. This error has been fixed. (PLS-1476)

  • The directory of the sapnwrfc.ini file is explicitly set in seal-co-notifier service via the SAPNWRFCINI_PATH environment key. (PLS-2013)

  • The bug has been fixed, where error events between streaming services got lost because of network issues and caused a "… still waiting for response from follow up services" error message. (PLS-2050, PLS-2112)

  • The bug has been fixed, where PLOSSYS 4 scaling parameter were not evaluated if not received via IPP. (PLS-2058)

  • If job metadata have been changed by a converter service, the job parameter job.metadata is updated accordingly to be used in the flow of seal-convert-dispatcher service. (PLS-2147)

  • SAP device notifications are fail-safe like job notifications. (PLS-2165)

  • Device notifications for a redirected device now include the device to which the job is being redirected to: e.g. "Printer is redirected to printer2". (PLS-2232)

Known Issues:

  • When changing the seal-island-checkout on a Windows client using the Repair option, default values will be written into the registry instead of the changed data. To prevent that issue, uninstall the current client first, then install anew. (PLS-1927)

  • When a key has been entered into Consul with leading or trailing spaces it can override the correct version of the key. (PLS-1985)

  • When updating from PLOSSYS 5 to PLOSSYS Output Engine 6.0.0 or higher under Linux, the directories for the old services seal-plossys-accounting and seal-plossys-message-relay will not be deleted. (PLS-1990)

  • plossys service stop (--full) fails if MongoDB is not running. (PLS-2189)

6.2.0

New Features:

  • Node.js has been updated to 20.17.0.

  • The new environment key ANALYZE_PDF_PAGE_SIZES for seal-convert-dispatcher service specifies if incoming PDF files are to be analyzed to detect the page sizes. The default value is false. For the analyzis of page sizes the new service seal-convert-pdfprae has been added. (PLS-1783)

  • CALLBACK_NOTIFICATIONS_MAX_RETRIES specifies the maximum number of attempts for notification callbacks in the seal-co-notifier service. (PLS-1995)

  • To print files for which there are no built-in converters, PLOSSYS Output Engine can make use of Digital Process Factory (DPF) for the input conversion of these file formats. For this, the new service seal-convert-dpf has been introduced. For more information refer to Use DPF for File Format Conversion. (PLS-2036, PLS-2040)

  • For the default value of the environment key CALLBACK_HOST, the seal-convert-dpf service tries to ascertain the FQDN of the server. Otherwise the local hostname is used as default. (PLS-2155)

Bug-Fixes:

  • Virtual router queues using the job.getMaxPage function to output files to different printers depending on page size work with PDF files too. (PLS-1706)

  • An icon for job status added has been added to PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-2000)

  • If a job name contains the word error, the job will not automatically set to status error by seal-pjl-checkout service. (PLS-2015)

  • All job-specific messages, especially those concerning callbacks, are listed in the job log in PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-2070)

  • The bug has been fixed, where seal-checkin did not save the original page orientation of TIFF files as page metadata in the database. (PLS-2074)

  • A bug in seal-copier service has been fixed that caused printer queues to get stuck and stop printing. (PLS-2076)

  • The Report a problem link in PLOSSYS Administrator has been fixed. (PLS-2086)

  • A bug regarding PDF conversion using Ghostscript in seal-convert-pdf2ps has been fixed. For easier tests, the new environment key COMMAND_OVERWRITE is available to specify which command the service should use for PDF conversion. (PLS-2158)

Known Issues:

  • When changing the seal-island-checkout on a Windows client using the Repair option, default values will be written into the registry instead of the changed data. To prevent that issue, uninstall the current client first, then install anew. (PLS-1927)

  • When a key has been entered into Consul with leading or trailing spaces it can override the correct version of the key. (PLS-1985)

  • When updating from PLOSSYS 5 to PLOSSYS Output Engine 6.0.0 or higher under Linux, the directories for the old services seal-plossys-accounting and seal-plossys-message-relay will not be deleted. (PLS-1990)

  • In very rare cases, if error events between streaming services get lost because of network issues and the other involved services do not close their streams, it can cause the job being stuck in the "… still waiting for response from follow up services" stage for a long time. Please cancel the job manually in such a case. (PLS-2050, PLS-2112)

6.1.4

Bug-Fixes:

  • The stability of the streaming services seal-bodyscanner, seal-copier, seal-ghost, seal-checkout, seal-pjl-checkout and seal-mainland-checkout has been improved. (PLS-2149)

  • The problem has been fixed, that caused jobs to be stuck in seal-ghost service and to block the printer queue. (PLS-2153)

  • The issue causing CrashLoopBackOffs with seal-bodyscanner service has been fixed. (PLS-2157)

Known Issues:

  • When changing the seal-island-checkout on a Windows client using the Repair option, default values will be written into the registry instead of the changed data. To prevent that issue, uninstall the current client first, then install anew. (PLS-1927)

  • When a key has been entered into Consul with leading or trailing spaces it can override the correct version of the key. (PLS-1985)

  • When updating from PLOSSYS 5 to PLOSSYS Output Engine 6.0.0 or higher under Linux, the directories for the old services seal-plossys-accounting and seal-plossys-message-relay will not be deleted. (PLS-1990)

  • The new job status added has no icon in PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-2000)

  • If a job name contains the word error, the job will always set to status error by seal-pjl-checkout service. (PLS-2015)

  • In very rare cases, if error events between streaming services get lost because of network issues and the other involved services do not close their streams, it can cause the job being stuck in the "… still waiting for response from follow up services" stage for a long time. Please cancel the job manually in such a case. (PLS-2050, PLS-2112)

6.1.3

Bug-Fixes:

  • The bug has been fixed, that caused jobs to fail because of premature HTTP request timeouts. (PLS-2110)

  • In case of an output error, for example if a printer was not reachable, seal-ghost service process was terminated because of an unhandled EPIPE event. This bug has been fixed. (PLS-2123)

Known Issues:

  • When changing the seal-island-checkout on a Windows client using the Repair option, default values will be written into the registry instead of the changed data. To prevent that issue, uninstall the current client first, then install anew. (PLS-1927)

  • When a key has been entered into Consul with leading or trailing spaces it can override the correct version of the key. (PLS-1985)

  • When updating from PLOSSYS 5 to PLOSSYS Output Engine 6.0.0 or higher under Linux, the directories for the old services seal-plossys-accounting and seal-plossys-message-relay will not be deleted. (PLS-1990)

  • The new job status added has no icon in PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-2000)

  • If a job name contains the word error, the job will always set to status error by seal-pjl-checkout service. (PLS-2015)

  • In very rare cases, if error events between streaming services get lost because of network issues and the other involved services do not close their streams, it can cause the job being stuck in the "… still waiting for response from follow up services" stage for a long time. Please cancel the job manually in such a case. (PLS-2050, PLS-2112)

6.1.1

New Features:

  • Analog to the log messages of seal-checkout and seal-bodyscanner, the services seal-controller, seal-ghost and seal-copier log the end of input stream if all documents of a job have arrived. (PLS-2059)

  • PDF Tools have been updated to version 3.7.1. (PLS-2062)

  • The new environment key NO_RESPONSE_CHECK_INTERVAL specifies the intervall at which data streams are checked to see if they are still active. The key has a default value of 10m. (PLS-2072)

Bug-Fixes:

  • The quality issue has been fixed when printing files with transparencies under Linux. (PLS-1987)

  • The bug has been fixed that caused the browser to freeze when copying entries from PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-2005)

  • The bug has been fixed, where seal-ghost service started a new Ghostscript process when attempting to print anew and the printer was not reachable, leading to a large amount of parallel running Ghostscript services. (PLS-2017)

  • The bug has been fixed that caused seal-checkout to crash saying "Cannot destructure property 'writableEnded'". (PLS-2072)

  • The bug has been fixed that caused seal-copier to crash saying "Unhandled rejection occurred" after seal-checkout returned an error status. (PLS-2073)

Known Issues:

  • When changing the seal-island-checkout on a Windows client using the Repair option, default values will be written into the registry instead of the changed data. To prevent that issue, uninstall the current client first, then install anew. (PLS-1927)

  • When a key has been entered into Consul with leading or trailing spaces it can override the correct version of the key. (PLS-1985)

  • When updating from PLOSSYS 5 to PLOSSYS Output Engine 6.0.0 or higher under Linux, the directories for the old services seal-plossys-accounting and seal-plossys-message-relay will not be deleted. (PLS-1990)

  • The new job status added has no icon in PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-2000)

  • If a job name contains the word error, the job will always set to status error by seal-pjl-checkout service. (PLS-2015)

  • In very rare cases, if error events between streaming services get lost because of network issues and the other involved services do not close their streams, it can cause the job being stuck in the "… still waiting for response from follow up services" stage for a long time. Please cancel the job manually in such a case. (PLS-2050)

6.1.0

New Features:

  • Service key CONSUL_FORCE_TLS is available to specify if Consul uses TLS.

  • Service key MONGODB_FORCE_TLS is available to specify if connections to MongoDB always use TLS.

  • When outputting a job, the job might be converted according to the language a printer requires. The job parameter outputFormat shows the file format sent to the printer and is displayed in PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-988)

  • Jobs that fail because of errors in the printer language will finish with the status Error. (PLS-1600)

  • With seal-island-checkout as of version 1.21, PJL printers at remote sites can be controlled via PJL commands same as PJL printers at the main site. (PLS-1971)

  • For ALLOWED_OIDC_CLIENTS, the new operators neq, notWildcard, regex and notRegex have been added to support more security scenarios. Refer to Permissions and OIDC Roles for Linux or Permissions and OIDC Roles for Windows. (PLS-1980)

  • The name of the environment key to store API key credentials for remote site clients has been changed from AUTH_CLIENTS to CLIENTS. (PLS-1981)

  • API keys for remote site clients can be generated via PLOSSYS CLI. On how to do this, refer to API Key Creation. (PLS-1981)

  • The services seal-co-notifier and seal-job-notifier have been updated with Node.js 20.12.2. (PLS-1991, PLS-2003)

  • The new service key RFC_TRACE_DIR for the seal-co-notifier service can be used to specify the directory for the SAP trace files. (PLS-2001)

  • New printer key pauseAfterKey specifies a pause after each print job ensuring the separation of consecutive jobs. This key is only valid for PJL printers and overwrites the new PAUSE_AFTER_PRINT service key. (PLS-2011)

  • Ghostscript has been updated to version 10.03.1.1. (PLS-2012)

  • The MongoDB Node.js driver has been downgraded to version 5.9.2. This has no effect on supported MongoDB versions or the used Node.js version. (PLS-2027)

  • Node.js has been updated to 20.16.0 due to security reasons. (PLS-2043)

  • seal-convert-sapwin service has been updated to version 1.0.3. For more information about the topic, refer to Output SAPWIN Files. The update contains the following changes:

    • The firewall.sh script will not start the firewall anymore. (SWK-12)

    • Node.js has been updated to version 20.16.0 due to security reasons. (SWK-15)

Bug-Fixes:

  • PLOSSYS CLI returned not 0 when trying to shut down an already shut down service. This has been fixed. If the service is not running in the end, the return code will be 0. (PLS-1123)

  • The pjl-checkout has been improved to increase the compatibility with Konica-Minolta and Kyocera printers. (PLS-1792)

  • In rare cases convert-dispatcher service started a job before the metadata were written into the database. This bug has been fixed. A new status added is set by seal-checkin and seal-ipp-checkin for the timeframe needed. (PLS-1997)

  • Jobs without printer name will fail with status ERROR. (PLS-2002)

  • The need for manual assistance at a PJL printer during paper changes even if the requested paper format is available has been eliminated. (PLS-2010)

  • The bug that caused ipp-checkin to freeze when writing to the MongoDB database has been fixed. (PLS-2027)

Known Issues:

  • When changing the seal-island-checkout on a Windows client using the Repair option, default values will be written into the registry instead of the changed data. To prevent that issue, uninstall the current client first, then install anew. (PLS-1927)

  • When a key has been entered into Consul with leading or trailing spaces it can override the correct version of the key. (PLS-1985)

  • When updating from PLOSSYS 5 to PLOSSYS Output Engine 6.0.0 or higher under Linux, the directories for the old services seal-plossys-accounting and seal-plossys-message-relay will not be deleted. (PLS-1990)

  • The new job status added has no icon in PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-2000)

  • If a job name contains the word error, the job will always set to status error by seal-pjl-checkout service. (PLS-2015)

  • If a printer using ghostscript is not reachable, seal-ghost service will start a new Ghostscript process when attempting to print anew. The old Ghostscript processes will not be stopped, their number increasing over time. As a quick fix, restart the seal-ghost service. (PLS-2017)

  • In very rare cases, if error events between streaming services get lost because of network issues and the other involved services do not close their streams, it can cause the job being stuck in the "… still waiting for response from follow up services" stage for a long time. Please cancel the job manually in such a case. (PLS-2050)

d## 6.0.0

New Features:

  • As of version 6.0.0, PLOSSYS 5 has been renamed to PLOSSYS Output Engine. The services seal-plossys-acounting and seal-plossys-message-relay have been renamed to seal-out-ngn-accounting and seal-out-ngn-message-relay. For more information, refer to Update on Windows or Update on Linux. (PLS-1931, PLS-1950, PLS-1951, PLS-1952, PLS-1953)

  • seal-logrotate to cleanup outdated SEAL Systems-specific log files is no longer included in the PLOSSYS Output Engine bundle. Please download and install SEAL Logrotate separately, refer to SEAL Logrotate documentation. (PLS-1641)

  • To enable remote printing, two new services have been introduced. The seal-mainland-checkout service is responsible for sending print jobs to the seal-island-checkout on remote sites. For more information, refer to Remote Prining. (PLS-1813)

  • Due to the renaming of PLOSSYS 5 to PLOSSYS Output Engine, Prometheus metrics have been renamed too. (PLS-1914)

  • Logging information for jobs that have been printed remotely are available in the central logging. (PLS-1930)

  • When a job has been printed on a remote site, the remote site's name is listed in the job metadata in seal-out-ngn-accounting.log (formerly seal-plossys-acounting.log), for example "remoteSite": "Inari". (PLS-1945)

  • The MongoDB Node.js driver has been updated to 6.3.0. (PLS-1903)

  • Node.js has been updated to 20.12.2 due to security reasons, thus RHEL 7 and SLES 12 are no longer supported. (PLS-1841, PLS-1977, PLS-1988)

  • The log files for seal-controller, seal-ghost, seal-bodyscanner and seal-copier have been improved. They will state received error from requested service instead of unexpected error code 500 if an error stems originally from another service. (PLS-1819)

  • Prometheus metrics are available for all services. For detailed information, refer to Metrics. (PLS-1964, PLS-1966)

  • The new environment key POSTSCRIPT_LEVEL specifies the default postscript level that the PDF to Postscript converter is supposed to generate. (PLS-1719)

  • When using plossys service stop --full on the MongoDB primary node, a warning will be issued and the primary changed. (PLS-1393)

  • PLOSSYS Output Engine will evaluate environment keys even if they have been entered into Consul with trailing or leading spaces. (PLS-1638)

  • Raster Tools 4.2.0 are contained in the delivery. (PLS-1962)

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following new features have been implemented:

    • PLOSSYS Administrator has been updated to Angular 17. (PLS-1858)

    • Remote printers are marked with an R in PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-1947)

    • The job log contains detailed information if job events can not be sent to SAP due to the SEALCPIC user being locked. (PLS-1390)

Bug-Fixes:

  • The bug has been fixed, that prevented the overwriting of the printer when using a zip file with the plossys job print command. (PLS-1648)

  • The bug has been fixed, that caused an uncaught exception in the openid-auth modul and a crash of the PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-1825)

  • The bug has been fixed, that caused an error with seal-copier service when activating Consul ACL. (PLS-1815)

  • The bug has been fixed, that caused a crash of the seal-checkout service when sending large files per IPP to a printer. (PLS-1978)

Known Issues:

  • When changing the seal-island-checkout on a Windows client using the Repair option, default values will be written into the registry instead of the changed data. To prevent that issue, uninstall the current client first, then install anew. (PLS-1927)

  • When a key has been entered into Consul with leading or trailing spaces it can override the correct version of the key. (PLS-1985)

  • The services seal-co-notifier and seal-job-notifier are still using Node.js 20.11.1. (PLS-1988)

  • When updating to PLOSSYS Output Engine 6.0.0 under Linux, the directories for the old services seal-plossys-accounting and seal-plossys-message-relay will not be deleted. (PLS-1990)

  • During operation it has been noticed that the ipp-checkin service can freeze when writing to the MongoDB database. (PLS-2027)

5.7.1

New Features:

  • Prometheus metrics have been implemented for seal-copier service. (PLS-1957)

Bug-Fixes:

  • The bug has been fixed, that caused a memory leak in the seal-copier service. The service will no longer stream files from the database but save them temporarily to the hard drive. In case of container installations, make sure sufficient space is available. (PLS-1957)

5.7.0

New Features:

  • As of version 5.7.0, PLOSSYS 5 supports document streams. Document streams are the Output Engine way to ensure that a series of individual documents can be printed without being interrupted by other documents. The new service key DOCUMENT_STREAM_TIMEOUT specifies the inactivity timeout of a printer after processing the last job of a document stream. For more information, refer to Using Document Streams. (PLS-1822, PLS-1848)

  • PLOSSYS 5 can be monitored by Prometheus. For available metrics, refer to Metrics. (PLS-1872)

  • Internal communication has been changed to NATS methods. Thus the service keys MONGO_ACTIONS_URL and MONGO_ACTIONS_AGE are no longer needed or available. (PLS-1579)

  • The new environment variable TLS_MIN_VERSION allows to define the minimum TLS protocol version to be used. (PLS-1771)

  • PLOSSYS CLI can be used to check if a printer supports the IPP or LPR protocol. The output will display the tested connection instead of the printer name. If a test file is specified, it will be transmitted using the requested protocol. For more information, refer to Check Printer Connections. (PLS-137, PLS-138)

  • The new environment key NOTIFICATION_CALLBACKS specifies callback actions for particular events like task or document updates. For more information on the usage of callback actions, refer to Create Callback Actions (PLS-1856)

  • Log messages about attempted client connections to the ipp-checkin service have been added to the seal-ipp-checkin.log. (PLS-1894)

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following features have been implemented:

    • Job log files can be downloaded using the meatballs menu at a job. SEAL Elastic Stack as of version 7.17.0 has to be installed for it. (PLS-1820, PLS-1895)

Bug-Fixes:

  • Log data of the services has been unified. metadata.printer is now used in all instances where metadata.printername has been used previously. (PLS-1539)

  • The firewall.sh script will not start the firewall anymore. (PLS-1628)

  • Base of the timeout for JOB_LIFETIME_PROCESSED_ACCOUNTING, JOB_LIFETIME_PROCESSED_CANCELED, JOB_LIFETIME_PROCESSED_ERROR and JOB_LIFETIME_PROCESSED_PROCESSED of a job is now the time when the respective state got reached. (PLS-1526)

  • The bug has been fixed, where repeating jobs in virtual queues took too long. (PLS-1901)

  • The bug with unprocessed notifications from the seal-notifier and seal-co-notifier services has been fixed. (PLS-1852)

  • The bug has been fixed, that caused jobs being stuck in waiting for preprocessing forever if all queues have been stopped for some time. (PLS-1921)

  • The time seal-housekeeper service needs to sweep old jobs has been improved. (PLS-302)

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following bugs have been fixed:

    • The bug has been fixed, where some timestamps were not displayed in human readable form. (PLS-1823, PLS-1834)

    • The bug has been fixed, where self-defined columns were excluded from sorting. (PLS-1875)

5.6.1

New Features:

  • Used third party tools such as Consul or EnvConsul are now available for the s390x processor architecture. (PLS-1836)

  • All services of PLOSSYS 5 using Node.js are now available for the s390x processor architecture. (PLS-1837)

  • GhostScript 10.01.2.4 is included in the delivery. (PLS-1851)

  • Performance of the seal-housekeeper service has been improved. (PLS-1854)

Bug-Fixes:

  • The bug has been fixed, that caused the seal-ghost service to freeze. (PLS-1855)

5.6.0

New Features:

  • PLOSSYS 5 supports scaling and rotating of small and large format jobs. (PLS-1730, PLS-1733, PLS-1782, PLS-1793, PDF-835, PDF-843, PDF-844, PDF-845)

  • New service key TLS_EXTERNAL_DIR to specify the external certificate files necessary for the services handling external requests. (PLS-1723)

  • New service key DEFAULT_AUTO_RELOAD_INTERVAL to specify the default polling interval used to auto-refresh of the jobs and printers tables in PLOSSYS Administrator. (SDT-11566)

  • New service key PRINT_PARAMS specifies if the seal-convert-ps2pdf service should read print parameters like page size or duplex from the postscript document. (PLS-1744)

  • New service key IPP_SYSTEMS specifies the authentication and proxy configuration for the source IPP systems. (PLS-1713)

  • PLOSSYS 5 recognizes TIFF jobs, converts them to PDF. For this ltiff2pdf 4.5.3 has been implemented. (PLS-1724, PLS-1725, PLS-1726, PLS-1727)

  • PDF Tools 3.7.0, sapgofupdf 9.4.1, sap2pdf 9.4.1 and sealfonts 1.4.1 are contained in the delivery. (PLS-1789, PLS-1774)

  • Raster Tools 4.1.0 and ltiff2pdf 4.5.4 revision 1.88 are contained in the delivery. (PLS-1807)

  • Ghostscript has been updated to version 10.01.2.2 due to security reasons. (PLS-1806)

  • ltiff2pdf sets the job properties for page size and color to be used in accounting. (PLS-1724)

  • Changes in job.properties.current will be saved in the database at the end of a flow or before the call of a converter. Only the userName cannot be changed. (PLS-1029)

  • All original job parameters will be kept in job.orig. (PLS-1470)

  • PDF files created can contain PJL printer commands. (PLS-1772)

  • Communication with PLOSSYS Administrator is now using the https protocol. Refer to Update under Windows or Update under Linux if you cannot reach PLOSSYS Administrator after the update.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following new features have been implemented:

    • PLOSSYS Administrator has been updated to Angular 16.1.2. (PLS-1747)

    • At the printers page, the entry current job links to the jobs page to enable easier access to the job log of this job. (PLS-1384)

    • In the job log, entries with longer parameter names are better readable. (PLS-1602)

    • The key words for the scale and rotate functionality of PLOSSYS 5 are supported. (PLS-1793)

    • The job log lists the releaseJobTime for pickup jobs. (PLS-1818)

Bug-Fixes:

  • The logging of status changes has been improved. (PLS-1622)

  • The bug has been fixed, where a failed job could not be deleted in the PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-1762)

  • The bug has been fixed, where too many job parameters led to a job error. (PLS-1684)

  • The bug has been fixed, where status notifications to SAP has been sent in the wrong order. For this, the new service seal-co-notifier has been implemented. For necessary changes, refer to Update to 5.6.0 for Windows or Update to 5.6.0 for Linux. (PLS-1778)

  • The bug has been fixed, where the before_format flow of the standard format flow was executed after the flow and not before. (PLS-1835)

  • The bug has been fixed, that caused the seal-copier service to crash repeatedly. (PLS-1828)

  • The cleanup of orphaned files and chunks has been improved, to avoid seal-housekeeper crashs. (PLS-1757)

Known Issues:

  • In rare cases a user cannot see any installed printers in PLOSSYS Administrator due to an orphaned filter. For a workround refer to the update instructions (SDT-11328, SDT-11433).

5.5.2

New Features:

  • Ghostscript has been updated to 10.01.2. (PLS-1773)

5.5.1

New Features:

Bug-Fixes:

  • seal-convert-pdf2ps has been upgraded to version 2.2.8 to enable reading access to the font data in the docker image. (PLS-1712)

  • The issue where feedback from PLOSSYS 5 to SAP did not occur, was late, or in the wrong order, has been fixed. The bug fix also requires SEAL NATS 2.9.2. More more information regarding the SEAL NATS update, refer to the SEAL NATS documentation. (PLS-1738, PLS-1742, NATS-18)

  • The bug has been fixed, where Consul did not show all instances of a node. (PLS-1754)

  • The bug has been fixed, that caused print jobs to stop with an unexpected status code 500. (PLS-1761)

  • The bug has been fixed, that prevented the successful stop of jobs and queues in a cluster. (PLS-1714)

  • The bug has been fixed, where queue names and output destinations were not processed correctly and thus made pickup printing impossible. (PLS-1751)

Known Issues:

  • In rare cases a user cannot see any installed printers in PLOSSYS Administrator due to an orphaned filter. For a workround refer to the update instructions (SDT-11328, SDT-11433).

5.5.0

New Features:

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, previews for OTF, PDF or PostScript jobs are available. (PLS-1610)

  • For the preview of the jobs, the PREVIEW_FORMAT key is available which specifies the format of the preview. (PLS-1609)

  • PLOSSYS Administrator has been updated to Angular 15. (PLS-1663)

  • For PLOSSYS CLI, the plossys printer-config commands are available for managing additional printer configurations. For more information, refer to Administrate Additional Printer Configurations. (PLS-1668)

  • PLOSSYS 5.5.0 supports seal-convert-sapwin as of 1.0.2.69.

  • Replaced soon deprecated Node Request Module with got. (PLS-1680)

Bug-Fixes:

  • A log message is output if a job has been canceled. (PLS-1615)

  • The log messages of all services have been standardized. (PLS-1163)

  • The situation when a printer is overloaded is correctly recognized and handled. (PLS-1599)

  • In job and user names, characters with an encoding lower than 0x20 and backslashes are processed correctly. (PLS-1545)

  • To avoid crashes of the seal-housekeeper service, the default of the time interval after which an incomplete job is regarded as incorrect and deleted from the database (SWEEP_AGE) has been set to the maximum of all other JOB_LIFETIME_* values for the seal-housekeeper service. By default, this is 3d. (PLS-1679)

  • The bug with the navigation in PLOSSYS Administrator when using Microsoft Edge has been fixed. (PLS-1673)

  • The bug that a PostScript job containing blank lines in front of the %!PS-Adobe string were not accepted has been fixed. (PLS-1670)

  • The bug that jobs from a redirected pickup queue were not output has been fixed. (PLS-1700)

  • The bug that the message concerning pickup printer jobs remained open for a long time in PLOSSYS Administrator has been fixed. (PLS-1650)

  • The bug with the context menu in PLOSSYS Administrator has been fixed. (PLS-1675)

  • The bug with different data types for the identical data in log messages has been fixed. (PLS-1626)

Known Issues:

  • In rare cases a user cannot see any installed printers in PLOSSYS Administrator due to an orphaned filter. For a workround refer to the update instructions (SDT-11328, SDT-11433).

5.4.1

New Features:

  • For PLOSSYS CLI, the plossys printer check command is available for checking the connections to the printers and, optionally, sending test files to the printers. For more information, refer to Administrate the Printers. (PLS-136)

  • PLOSSYS 5.4.1.938 contains seal-sapgofu2pdf 100.2.6 with sap2pdf version 9.2.2. (PLS-1636)

  • The driver for MongoDB has been updated to 4.11.0. (PLS-1607)

  • The bug with stamping SAP spool jobs has been fixed. An new version of default.txt is contained in delivery. (PLS-1644)

Bug-Fixes:

  • The bug that queues did no longer respond and output jobs due to erroneous database locking has been fixed. (PLS-1642)

  • The bug in PLOSSYS Administrator when filtering the jobs for a specific printer has been fixed. (PLS-1645)

5.4.0

New Features:

  • The SEAL NATS message broker has been introduced to improve the message handling and has to be installed before updating to PLOSSYS 5.4.0, refer to the SEAL NATS documentation. (PLS-1389)

  • The service seal-plossys-message-relay has been introduced for communication with the SEAL NATS message broker. The POLLING_INTERVAL key is available to specify the intervall after which the service checks for new notifications. (PLS-1890)

  • Virtual queues are available for failover, loadbalancing and routing. For the available keys, refer to Printer Keys. (PLS-1374)

  • SAPWIN files from SAP can be converted and output by PLOSSYS 5, refer to Output SAPWIN Files. (PLS-1133)

  • Before updating, the existent envconsul.json file is backed up with a timestamp and can be manually merged into the newly installed envconsul.json file after the update. (PLS-1455)

  • The JOB_MAX_POSTPONED_COUNT key has been moved to the seal-convert-dispatcher service. For more information refer to Update to 5.4.0 for Windows and Linux.

  • The installation and configuration of SEAL Elastic Stack is described in a separate documentation: SEAL Elastic Stack

  • For printers supporting the PLJ protocol, PLJ replies from the printers can be evaluated. This way, it can be ensured that jobs are completely output and jobs can be repeated at the page where the output was interrupted. For the restrictions with the PJL output and page failover and how to activate and configure the PLJ output, refer to Activate page failover. (PLS-1534)

  • The format of the Consul log file has been changed to JSON. For this, "log_json": true, has been added to consul.json. (PLS-1509)

  • Via PLOSSYS CLI, a Zip file resulting from plossys job collect or the correspondent operation in PLOSSYS Administrator can be printed, refer to Print a Document or a Zip File. (PLS-133)

  • Via PLOSSYS CLI, a printer message can be set for and removed from a printer, refer to Administrate the Printers, and a printer can be redirected to another one, refer to Redirect a Printer.

  • For the PLOSSYS CLI command plossys service stop, the --full option is available. plossys service stop --full stops all PLOSSYS 5 services including the services of the infrastructure tools such as MongoDB and Consul. plossys service stop only stops the Output Engine services but not the services of the infrastructure tools. (PLS-1593)

  • The security certificates contained in delivery have been updated.

  • PDF Tools (pdfstamphft, pdf2ps) from SEAL Systems have been updated to the newest versions. (PLS-1120)

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following new features have been implemented:

    • Virtual queues are marked by V at the queue icon. (PLS-1417)

    • PLOSSYS Administrator has been updated to Angular 13. (PLS-1331)

    • Due to new functionality with Angular 13, the watch tabs were redesigned so that the Material framework is no longer needed and no longer has to be considered with updates. (PLS-1272)

    • Pausing virtual printers is impossible. Therefore, the pausing icon in PLOSSYS Administrator is inactive with virtual printers. (PLS-1508)

    • The pause operation in PLOSSYS Administrator has been extended so that queues that no longer respond and no longer print can be reactivated by pausing and resuming them via PLOSSYS Administrator. (PLS-1196)

Bug-Fixes:

  • The log messages in the job log file have been improved for redirecting printers. (PLS-297)

  • The bug with missing libraries for the PDF tools has been fixed. (PLS-1500)

  • The bug with wrong page information in case of SAP documents has been fixed. (PLS-1400)

  • The bug with "Invalid Printer URL" when updating a printer with multiple URLs has been fixed. (PLS-1204)

  • The bug with canceling a job has been fixed. (PLS-1559)

  • The bug that the housekeeper did not purge jobs with queue names containing upper and lower cases has been fixed. (PLS-1618)

  • The firewall.sh for Linux has been improved. (PLS-1487)

  • The bug that jobs were output twice when a printer was paused has been fixed. (PLS-1558)

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following bugs have been fixed:

    • The bug that the columns in the job view were sorted incorrectly when resetting the columns to default has been fixed. (PLS-1494)

    • The bug with missing metadata in the job view has been fixed. (PLS-1469)

    • The bug with multiple error messages when pausing multiple printers in a bulk action has been fixed. (PLS-1347)

    • Modified settings remain when the dashboard is reopened. (PLS-1303)

    • The bug in the communication with the server when jumping to the last item in the printer list has been fixed. (PLS-1405)

5.3.5

New Features:

  • Opening the firewall ports is no longer part of the installation of PLOSSYS 5 due to this is normally done by the system administrators on customer side. However, a separate script firewall.ps1 for Windows or firewall.sh for Linux is contained in delivery and can be used for opening the firewall ports. For more information, refer to Open the Firewall Ports on Windows or Open the Firewall Ports on Linux.

  • After installing or updating PLOSSYS 5 and the components such as Elastic Stack or MongoDB, the install scripts no longer start the services. The services have to be started manually after the installation or update. For more information, refer to the installation and update descriptions for Windows and Linux.

  • Installation and update times have been significantly reduced.

  • The default of the time after which the successfully terminated jobs (JOB_LIFETIME_PROCESSED) are deleted has been set to one hour.

  • The PICKUP_BLOCK_INACTIVITY_TIMEOUT key is available for specifying an additional inactivity timeout after processing one or more pickup jobs released by a user via IPP.

  • PLOSSYS 5 can use the WIN_INF_PAGES and WIN_INF_COPIES IPP attributes with the accounting.

  • The PDF/A conversion in the sap-convert-sapgof service generates PDF/A-2B by default.

  • The version 9.52.0.12 of Ghostscript is used.

  • The version 3.5.1.5 of PDF Tools is used.

  • The v2 REST routes have been deactivated. Now, only v3 with authentication is supported. For this, easyPRIMA as of version 1.7.0 or version 1.4.0 (development release only) is required. For easyPRIMA 1.3.1, a patch concerning the version change of the REST routes is available.

  • PLOSSYS 5 provides accounting. The accounting data (queue name, job name, PLS_COSTCENTER, the total amount of pages in combination with copies, color, format, page number from SAP, simplex/duplex, final status) is available in Elasticsearch.

  • The Accounting status is available for the jobs.

  • For IPP, HTTPS is supported with the printer connection.

  • The mapping of the psProperties and the job attributes from IPP, LPD and PostScript have been standardized to a unique metadata structure.

  • The JOBNAME and USERNAME parameters are stored in the job as jobName and userName. A compatibility layer is active in the current version, but in a future PLOSSYS 5 version, it will be deactivated. In order that the job and user names are displayed correctly at the printer, which is important especially when using 3rd-party pickup printing systems or secure printing with a PIN, make sure you will soon update to printer templates from March 2022 or later.

  • For the check-in services, the PRINTER_CACHE_TTL key is available for specifying the time interval after that a cached printer object expires.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following new features have been implemented:

    • The AUTH_IDP_CONNECT_TIMEOUT key is available for specifying the timeout for the connection to the OIDC identity provider.

    • The KIBANA_INDEX_PATTERN_LOG key is available for specifying the index pattern in Kibana used by PLOSSYS Administrator.

    • Via the user settings, the job and printer lists can be switched to a condensed mode.

    • Via the user settings, the display of the technical property names can be activated. The technical property names are required for the configuration of the stamp texts for example.

    • When searching in the log dialog, pressing TAB jumps to the next hit, Shift + TAB to the previous hit.

    • Beside German and English, PLOSSYS Administrator is now available in French.

    • Jobs in the Accounting status are visualized by a new icon.

    • The user can log on to different servers and ports within one browser instance.

    • All properties of a job are displayed in a simple structure. The page-specific properties are displayed with Get Job Properties.

Bug-Fixes:

  • The messages when updating PLOSSYS 5 has been improved.

  • The error handling with the installation script has been improved.

  • The bug that sometimes erroneous jobs were not deleted completely has been fixed.

  • The bug that sometimes SAP notifications were logged more than once has been fixed.

  • The bug that erroneous jobs were replied to SAP as successful has been fixed.

  • Empty pages with duplex printing are no longer considered in the accounting.

  • Temporary errors in the processing are logged as errors and no longer as warnings.

  • If an error occurs while processing a job and, therefore, an error sheet is generated, this is no longer replied to SAP as successful.

  • The port numbers opened by the firewall script has been fixed.

  • The PLOSSYS CLI commands on Linux execute the commands with sudo for users without root privileges.

  • The housekeeper service no longer harm jobs which just have arrived.

  • The memory leak with controller and checkout has been fixed.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following bugs have been fixed:

    • After reloading the user interface, the clear all button is active.

    • The details view has been improved so that large JSON objects can be displayed.

    • The bug that error messages without metadata.err.stack were not displayed in the job log has been fixed.

5.3.4

New Features:

  • The script firewall.ps1 for Windows or firewall.sh for Linux is contained in delivery and can be used for opening the firewall ports required for Elastic Stack. For more information, refer to Configure the Management Server on Windows or Configure the Management Server on Linux.

  • The installation script for Elastic Stack on Windows has been changed from a batch file to a PowerShell script.

  • The default of the MONGO_LOCKS_AGE key has been changed from ten seconds (10s) to one minute (1m).

  • In the view configuration of the OIDC roles, the %ALLOWED_PRINTER_NAMES% value is available representing all printers which the current user can see. For more information, refer to Permissions and OIDC Roles.

  • The LOG_FULL_JOB_PROPERTIES key is available for specifying if the metadata of the jobs are logged.

  • The successful SAP notifications are logged with the log level info.

  • With the job metadata, only one attribute concerning the number of copies is displayed. For how the number of copies are determined from the input data, refer to Set the Copies.

  • The PostScript attributes are output to an additional file with the .psproperties extension when collecting all job files into a zip archive (via the download icon in PLOSSYS Administrator for example).

  • Node.js has been updated due to security vulnerability.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following new features have been implemented:

    • PLOSSYS Administrator has been updated to Angular 12.

    • In the dialogs displaying the job and printer logs, buttons are available for refreshing the contents.

Bug-Fixes:

  • Jobs paused on the source system are no longer fetched by the IPP Proxy.

  • When stopping PLOSSYS 5 on Windows, all services of SEAL Systems are searched and not only those in the "Running" status in order to catch all services in an "unclear" status as well.

  • The bug with collecting all job files including the temporary files into a zip archive (via the download icon in PLOSSYS Administrator for example) has been fixed.

  • PostScript properties without PLS_ prefix are interpreted correctly.

  • The audit log messages have been fixed.

  • The bug with hanging queues at high load has been fixed.

  • The housekeeper service no longer harm jobs which just have arrived.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following bugs have been fixed:

    • Autoreload has been fixed with all tabs.

    • The number of waiting jobs is displayed correctly now.

5.3.3

New Features:

  • The socketCloseTimeout printer key is available for specifying the timeout for closing the connection to the printer for each printer separately.

  • Node.js has been updated due to security vulnerability.

  • Ghostscript has been updated to 9.52.0.6.

  • The AUDIT_LOG key is available for logging audit messages, for example, the current configuration of each service. By default, audit messages are logged. For the further configuration, the AUDIT_LOG_USER and the JWT_USERNAME keys are available. When updating to PLOSSYS 5.3.3, the configuration in filebeat.yml has to be entered manually, refer to Update on Windows or Update on Linux.

  • The housekeeping has been improved in order to lower the system load with MongoDB.

  • Instead of outputting a job to a printer, a script can be executed with the spool data, for example, for sending an e-mail or copying the spool file to the file system.

  • The USE_ETAG key is available for deactivating the ETag handling.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following new features have been implemented:

    • Job watch tabs are created also for printers without having jobs assigned.

    • All statuses can be selected by one click in the status selection dialog.

    • The time filter has been improved.

    • The icon for the specific printer indicates if there are notes assigned to this printer.

    • The PRINTER_NOTE_ACTION_CONFIRMATION key is available for specifying if a confirmation dialog is opened with actions on printers for which notes exist.

    • The click-able area of the Web link to SEAL Systems has become smaller.

    • The log messages are displayed in one line and can be expanded for more details.

    • In the dialog for selecting the columns to be displayed, all columns can be selected by one click. The dialog stays open until the user closes it explicitly.

Bug-Fixes:

  • The bug that objects were output incorrectly in the log messages has been fixed.

  • The bug that jobs were fetched more than once if they were stopped on the target system has been fixed.

  • The crash of seal-controller after an error occurred with MongoDB has been fixed.

  • A fatal message is logged in case of a service crash.

  • The housekeeper service no longer harm jobs which just have arrived.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following bugs have been fixed:

    • The icon displayed for the remote processing status has been corrected.

    • The postponedpreprocessing status is displayed in PLOSSYS Administrator.

    • The bug when switching between tabs which were previously renamed has been fixed.

5.3.2

New Features:

  • As of PLOSSYS 5.3.0, the seal-dispatcher is available as replacement for the seal-controller service. With PLOSSYS 5.3.2., the seal-dispatcher service is no longer supported. The functionality of the seal-controller service has been integrated into the seal-controller, the seal-rest and the seal-convert-dispatcher services.

  • The service evaluating PRINT_ERROR_SHEET changed from the seal-dispatcher to the seal-convert-dispatcher service.

  • The service evaluating CONVERT_ON_PRINTER_START changed from the seal-rest to the seal-controller service.

  • JOB_RETRY_DELAY is available for specifying the waiting time between the postponements in case the next service is not available for example.

  • JWT_ROLES is available for specifying the property name set in JSON Web Token (JWT) for accessing the user roles.

  • AUTH_ADDITIONAL_SCOPES is available for specifying additional scopes for OAuth 2.

  • AUTH_TOKEN_TYPE is available for specifying the type of the token used for the authentication against the REST API.

  • ORPHAN_CHECK_INTERVAL is available for specifying the time interval between two checks for printers no longer locked by a seal-controller instance.

  • MongoDB is no longer included in the installation of PLOSSYS 5. For how to install and configure MongoDB, refer to the SEAL-specific MongoDB documentation. After the installation and an update, the MONGO_xxx_URL have to be checked for correctness, refer to Configure the MongoDB Keys in PLOSSYS 5.

  • The installation script for PLOSSYS 5 on Windows has been changed from a batch file to a PowerShell script.

  • If a CA certificate has been specified, the Output Engine services and all other components such as MongoDB and Consul require a client certificate from their correspondent client components. This would require corresponding properties of the certificate and would be a high effort. A complete explanation of how to use client certificates is beyond the scope of this documentation. The chapters containing the security configuration have been changed accordingly.

  • Setting the query parameter errorHandling to smart is no longer supported due to every connection interruption is ignored with this and every output job is considered as successfully output even if it was erroneous.

  • A printer template is available for converting a job into PDF in the preprocessing.

  • The messages in the job log in case of a redirected printer have been improved.

  • The times output with the log messages can be read by human beings.

  • For collecting output jobs, the collect privilege is available with ALLOWED_OIDC_CLIENTS.

  • With the output job, the name as it was passed to the system is displayed instead of an internal name.

  • The seal-ipp-checkin service can be accessed both using IPP and IPPS. For enabling this, two URLs can be specified with SERVICE_URL.

  • Via ?stream=false with the connection string, jobs can be output via LPR to a Windows Print Server, refer to the connection printer key.

  • Before updating the system, the checkin services have to be shut down gracefully. A description of how to do this has been added to the documentation: Graceful Shutdown

  • Via the REST API, secure database queries can be specified with options so that only the relevant data will be transferred.

  • The status of a job received via IPP Proxy is displayed in the source system.

  • sapgofu2pdf.exe used by seal-sapgof has been updated to the version 9.0.12.

  • The installation method of the services has been improved so that the installation is much faster and all directories are deleted correctly when updating or uninstalling.

  • Instead of outputting a job to a printer, a script can be executed with the spool data, for example, for sending an e-mail or copying the spool file to the file system.

  • IPP and SAP notifications are kept in the database. The seal-housekeeper service cleans out-dated successful notifications after the specified time, NOTIFICATION_LIFETIME_IPP and NOTIFICATION_LIFETIME_SAP.

  • A memory leak has been fixed.

  • Node.js has been updated due to security vulnerability.

  • The SOCKET_CLOSE_TIMEOUT and SOCKET_CLOSE_TIMEOUT_IS_JOB_ERROR keys are available for the seal-checkout service for forcing the closing of the socket after sending a spool file to the printer unless the printer closes the connection.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following new features have been implemented:

    • The user interface has been redesigned using PrimeNG.

    • When updating the printer status, a dialog containing the status information is opened. The data displayed in the table is updated when closing this dialog.

    • Redirecting printers and jobs have been made more user-friendly and is provided via the context menu now.

    • The dashboard of PLOSSYS Administrator has been secured. In order that the user can see the dashboard, the dashbord area has to be specified in the ALLOWED_OIDC_CLIENTS key. For more information, refer to ALLOWED_OIDC_CLIENTS.

    • The size of the log dialog is kept for the following log dialogs.

    • By zipping the application, the size could be reduced from about 10 MB to under 1 MB. This significantly reduces the loading time.

Bug-Fixes:

  • If the user calling PLOSSYS CLI does not have the privileges for executing an operation, such as starting or stopping services, a correct error message is output.

  • The bug with PRINT_ERROR_SHEET in version 5.3.0 has been fixed.

  • In case of multiple copies of a document running on an error, the error sheet is output only once.

  • The housekeeping has been revised. It no longer crashes when a spoolfile to be deleted has already been deleted by another housekeeper instance or when too many jobs have to be deleted at once.

  • The bug with generating the PostScript code for the error sheets has been fixed.

  • The bug with specifying an erroneous log level has been fixed.

  • The bug when outputting native jobs via IPP has been fixed.

  • The bug with multiple URLs in the connection key has been fixed.

  • The checkPhysical and update privileges are evaluated correctly and added to the documentation.

  • The printer name is everywhere displayed as specified using upper and lower cases. In PLOSSYS Administrator, the display name is displayed correctly and all operations are available.

  • The bug when sending a wrong MIME type with a job so that the printer did not accept the job has been fixed. The MIME type is now set to application/octet-stream so that the receiver will find out for itself what job format it is.

  • The seal-copier service no longer crashes when a job cannot be sent to the printer.

  • The ipp-checkin gets the document of the last conversion instead of the original file.

  • The seal-job-notifier service can handle misconfigured jobs whose SAP systems IDs contain blanks only.

  • In case of a cluster installation, only one reply is sent back to SAP.

  • If a job cannot be output for a longer time, a log message is written. Via the remove-printer-lock.sh script, the SEAL Systems support can fix the problem.

  • If the reply to SAP does not work, a log message is written for each affected job.

  • The housekeeper service no longer harm jobs which just have arrived.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following bugs have been fixed:

    • The bug that sometimes the job log could not be opened has been fixed.

    • In the table, the printer name item is shortened as all other parameters instead of being wrapped to the next line.

    • The server name in the cluster is logged as host.name in the job log.

    • The bug that a user without redirect privilege could resume a printer has been fixed.

    • The bug with auto reloading has been fixed.

    • The bug with resizing the columns in the job view has been fixed.

    • The bug that the global filter settings were lost when changing the tabs has been fixed.

    • The bug that the number of displayed elements changed after a while has been fixed.

    • The bug that the main page was empty when starting and had to be reloaded has been fixed.

5.3.0

New Features:

  • Node.js has been updated to 12.19.0.

  • Internet Explorer 11 is no longer supported.

  • In addition to the already supported operating systems, PLOSSYS 5.3.0 is supported on Windows 2019, SLES 15 SP2 and RHEL 8.2.

  • PDF Tools 3.5.1.3 is used with PLOSSYS 5.3.0.

  • For dispatching the jobs, the seal-controller service has been introduced which will replace the seal-dispatcher service in the next version. By default, the seal-dispatcher service is still used but you can already activate the seal-controller service by setting JOB_DISPATCHING to next. For update hints, refer to Update on Windows or Update on Linux.

  • The CONVERT_ON_PRINTER_START service key is available which specifies if waiting jobs are scheduled for conversion when the printer is being started.

  • The status of a device can be monitored via IPP if the device has an IPP interface. Unless specified, the monitoring IPP URL is determined from the printer's connection URL. For more information, refer to Configure the Device Monitoring.

  • The useCopier printer key is available which specifies if the seal-copier service is used for resolving the job copies by sending the document data multiple times to the printer. Normally, the job copies are resolved by the printer itself.

  • The jobMaxPostponedCount printer key is available which specifies how often a job for this printer will be postponed by the service in case the next service is not available for example. After exceeding the specified maximum of postponements, the job will be considered erroneous. This printer key overwrites the JOB_MAX_POSTPONED_COUNT service key for the specific printer.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following new features have been implemented:

    • PLOSSYS Administrator has been updated to Angular 11.

    • With the new PAGINATION_STEPS and PAGINATION_DEFAULT_STEP service keys, the selection menu for the number of items displayed in the lists can be specified.

    • With the new PRINTERS_METADATA and JOBS_METADATA service keys, columns can be added to the printers and jobs views. For more information, refer to Configure Additional Columns.

    • The status of the device can be displayed in an extra column and can be updated manually via menu item. The details of the device status are displayed in an extra dialog.

    • In the user interface, all items of the current page can be selected via a checkbox.

    • After the log-on, the last view is displayed instead of the dashboard.

    • If an operation takes a longer time, for example, when processing many items, a process bar is displayed.

    • A confirmation dialog is opened when adding more than 50 items to a list watch tab.

    • The Location, Comment and Department columns can be selected for being displayed but are deselected by default.

    • The PRINTER.DETAILS.config. prefix is cut with parameters having no translation assigned.

    • When redirecting a printer, the printer is stopped before.

    • For showing the log messages of jobs and printers, direct links to Kibana are provided which open new browser windows.

    • The icon font used in the user interface (Font Awesome) has been updated to the newest version.

    • The user profile is displayed in an extra dialog.

Bug-Fixes:

  • The printer name is case-insensitive now.

  • Syntax error handling of PLOSSYS CLI has been improved.

  • The bug with the SAP BC-XOM reply when deleting a job has been fixed.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following bugs have been fixed:

    • The delete functionality has been activated for jobs waiting for preprocessing.

    • The numbers of jobs in the different statuses are evaluated correctly in the charts displayed in the dashboard.

    • The order of the parameters is still the same after reloading the page.

    • The empty window after deleting a watch tab for printers or jobs is no longer displayed.

    • Some bugs concerning reloading have been fixed.

5.2.1

New Features:

  • The preprocessing, processing and postprocessing steps have been revised. Preprocessing consists of the analysis of the input file and the conversion into the metaformat (PDF) which can be processed by PLOSSYS 5. The processing consists of the formatting (scaling, rotation), the rendering (stamping) and the postprocessing (conversion into the format which can be processed by the output device).

  • The waiting status has been replaced by the preprocessing, waitpreprocessing and waitprocessing statuses.

  • For a better performance, the results of the processing steps are kept in the database and are used if a job has to be repeated with the same settings.

  • The seal-pdf2ps, seal-pdfstamp, seal-ps2pdf, seal-router and seal-sapgof services have been replaced by new ones or have become obsolete. They have to be uninstalled manually after the update.

  • For the preprocessing, processing and postprocessing steps, standard flows are provided which can be customized via customer-specific flows and user exits. The customer-specific flows will not be overwritten when updating PLOSSYS 5.

  • Via PLOSSYS CLI, flows can be listed, imported, removed and exported to a file. When being imported, the flows are checked for syntactical correctness.

  • Native queues are available. All jobs send to a native queue are spooled by PLOSSYS 5 without any conversion or other manipulation. A queue becomes a native queue by setting the nativeQueue queue parameter to true.

  • Native jobs are supported. A job becomes a native job by setting the document-format IPP parameter to application/vnd.plossys.native or by setting PLS_PLOTTYPE to NATIVE in the SEAL attributes with IPP or as PostScript property.

  • PostScript input files are only converted into PDF and back to PostScript if the files are generated by Adobe Acrobat and the output is a PCL 6 printer.

  • For a printer failover, more than one URL can be specified in connection with the printer configuration. The URLs has to be separated by blank. If the connection to a URL cannot be established, the next URL is tried.

  • The new versions Ghostscript 9.52 (Build Number 6), PDF Tools 3.5.1.2 and sapgofu2pdf 9.0.6 are contained in delivery.

  • Jobs in the preprocessing status can be canceled, deleted, paused and resumed.

  • When setting the query parameter errorHandling to smart in the LPR connection string, a job will be considered as successful as soon as all data have been sent. A missing ACK from the printer will not result in an error in this case.

  • PostScript files containing a PJL header at the beginning are recognized.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following new features have been implemented:

    • The framework Angular has been updated to the version 9. In doing so, the dashboard has been revised completely.

    • The user can reset the user interface to the defaults which means, for example, that the default columns are displayed and the column widths are set to the defaults.

    • The user can select which columns are to be displayed, for example, the column displaying the target printer with redirected printers.

    • The texts displayed in the user interface can be customized and new languages can be added.

    • With any printer, a note can be input, for example, when a printer is out of order due to maintenance. The note is displayed in a separate column. A tooltip shows the complete text when hovering over the column. It shows also the user who entered the note and the time when the note was entered.

    • A checkbox is provided for switching on an automatic reload of the printer and job views. The interval can be specified in the user profile individually. Default are 5 seconds.

    • In the job view, a link to the specified printer is provided. When clicking the link, a watch tab is created in the printer view containing the printer.

    • In the printer view, a link to the assigned jobs is provided. When clicking the link, a watch tab is created in the job view containing the jobs.

    • The user-specific settings (for example, the column selection and column widths) are additionally stored on the server so that the user has always the same settings, for example, when using another Web browser.

    • Like in all other columns, wildcards can also be used when filtering the printers.

    • Watch tabs can be created conveniently via context menu in the printer and the job views. Printers and jobs can be add to a watch tab or removed from a watch tab. Watch tabs can also be renamed.

    • The conversion results are provided together with the other job files when downloading the job in PLOSSYS Administrator.

    • Filters in the printer and in the job view can be saved as tabs.

Bug-Fixes:

  • jobid and uuid are logged correctly by all services and in all log levels.

  • The bug with the erroneous job count has been fixed.

  • If an error occurs within the conversion, an error message is output and the job is marked as erroneous.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the following bugs have been fixed:

    • The language-specific translations have been added for some new job attributes.

    • The number of jobs waiting for a stopped printer is displayed correctly.

    • The details dialog stays open with the automatic reloading.

5.1.0

New Features:

  • With the version 5.1.0 of PLOSSYS 5, the directory structure of PLOSSYS 5 has been changed. Due to this, some steps have to be done manually when updating to this version. For more information, refer to Update on Windows or Update on Linux.

  • ELK has been updated to the version 7.6.0. ELK has been renamed to Elastic Stack and Logstash is no longer required. Also, Elasticsearch Curator is no longer required for purging Logstash indices. The installation of Elastic Stack for PLOSSYS 5 has two parts now, one for the management server containing Elaticsearch, Kibana and Logrotate and one for the Output Engine server containing Filebeat. For this, two different installation packages are provided.

  • MongoDB has been updated due to security vulnerabilities.

  • Node has been updated to version 12 due to version 8 is no longer supported.

  • The default authentication has been changed from Basic Auth/NTLM to OIDC.

  • The default authentication type and the allowed OIDC clients with default roles has been added to the default configuration file (plossys.yml).

  • PLOSSYS 5 recognizes PCL-5, PCL-6 and OTF (UTF-16 and ASCII) jobs.

  • PLOSSYS 5 recognizes ZPL jobs and routes them through without conversion by default.

  • After receiving the SIGINT or SIGTERM signal, the server tries a graceful shutdown by closing the TCP server for incoming new connections and waiting until all currently open connections are closed.

  • Consul is initialized only once and the configuration is passed to all modules.

  • The configuration of PLOSSYS 5 can be read from local files instead of Consul.

  • If the SERVICE_DISCOVERY environment variable is set to cloud, the seal-sapgof service reads the configuration from the local file instead of from Consul.

  • For the seal-sapgof service and the seal-pdfstamp service, the CONFIG_DIR environment variable is available for specifying a directory containing the configuration files, for example, when running PLOSSYS 5 without Consul in the cloud.

  • The seal-ipp-proxy service is available.

  • The seal-attributes tags contained in IPP jobs are now merged into the job object used by printer templates. If values are specified either in IPP and in the job, IPP takes priority.

  • The IPP operation Get-Notifications is available. With the notify-wait attribute, the connection stays open until the job is in a final state in order to get more notifications.

  • The IPP operation CUPS-Get-Printers is available for returning all printers.

  • Test jobs can be created via IPP. Therefore, printer names containing special characters (UTF-8) are possible.

  • With PLOSSYS CLI, the config update command is available, which is similar to config import but imports only those keys which do not exist yet.

  • PLOSSYS CLI can get HTPASSWD data from Consul, generate a template for this data and import it to Consul.

  • PLOSSYS CLI can get ALLOWED_OIDC_CLIENTS data from Consul, generate a template for this data and import it to Consul.

  • The PRINT_ERROR_SHEET environment variable is available which specified if an error sheet is output in case of error. Before, the error sheet was output in case of error, now the error sheet is not output by default but can be activated by setting PRINT_ERROR_SHEET to Y.

  • All tables with PLOSSYS Administrator have been redesigned.

  • Texts which do not fit into the column no longer overwrite the text in the next column but are displayed partly. The complete text is displayed in a tooltip when hoovering over it.

  • The service configuration file for the PLOSSYS Administrator service has been changed to /usr/lib/systemd/system.

  • In PLOSSYS Administrator, the roles received from the identity provider and the effective roles are shown.

  • IPP Checkin, IPP Proxy and IPP Checkout stream data directly into MongoDB instead of loading it into the memory.

  • For the seal-dispatcher service, the JOB_MAX_POSTPONED_COUNT environment variable is available, which specifies how often a job will be postponed in case the next service is not available for example. After reaching the specified maximum of postponements, the job will be considered erroneous.

  • Ghostscript version 9.27.0 is used by PLOSSYS 5.

  • PDF Tools version 3.5.1.1 is used by PLOSSYS 5.

  • sapgofu2pdf version 9.0.6 is used by PLOSSYS 5.

  • Message Server is supported with the job reply to SAP BC-XOM.

  • SAP NW RFC SDK 7.50 is supported due to version 7.20 no longer is supported.

Bug-Fixes:

  • The Output Engine status has been corrected for IPP status aborted.

  • Some bugs in PLOSSYS Administrator have been fixed, for example, the select button for printer and date in Internet Explorer.

  • The path of the Ghostscript binary has been corrected.

  • The bug with the fatal error message when starting ELK has been fixed.

  • The bug with JOB_LIFETIME_WAITING_PICKUP has been fixed.

  • ipp-checkin sets the compression-supported attribute correctly to none when an IPP client requested the attributes with get-printer-attributes.

  • The bug with printer names consisting of digits only has been fixed.

  • The UUID is logged by all services correctly.

  • The bug with handling special characters in the printer name has been fixed.

5.0.5

New Features:

  • Allow authentication via OIDC (JWT, Json Web Token) with PLOSSYS CLI.

  • OIDC password flow is supported for authentication as alternative to Basic Auth.

  • For PLOSSYS CLI, new commands are available for setting and getting values of configuration keys in Consul and creating templates for specific keys such as ALLOWED_OIDC_CLIENTS.

  • With PLOSSYS CLI, the value of the HTPASSWD key can be read from and writes to a file that is given with the HTPASSWD_FILE key for the Basic Auth authentication.

  • The pickup status has been introduced and is set correctly for new printers. With a pickup printer, the status cannot be changed. The jobs in pickup printer queues are not processed.

  • With JOB_LIFETIME_CANCELED, a time interval can be specified after which the canceled jobs will be removed.

  • With JOB_LIFETIME_WAITING_PICKUP, a time interval can be specified after which the jobs waiting in a pickup printer queue will be removed.

  • With the SHOW_ALL_JOBS_FOR_PRINTER key, all jobs of a printer can be displayed.

  • Basic Auth is available as user authentication.

  • The following IPP operations have been implemented: Hold-Job, Restart-Job, Validate-Job, Cancel-Job for a specific job-id, Get-Job-Attributes, Release-Job

  • Release-Job and moveJob have been enhanced in order to find the target printer with Secure&Pickup Printing.

  • Canceled jobs are hidden in the Get-Jobs response. This prevents the Windows printer queue from listing canceled jobs with Deleting status and thus confusing the user.

  • Attributes have been added to the Get-Printer-Attributes response for supporting the iOS printer profiles.

  • Secure&Pickup Printing is supported. Pickup queues are configured via the pickup=true queue parameter.

  • The version of Ghostscript is logged in the verbose mode.

  • Reading print data from database as buffer instead of a utf-8-encoded string allows sending binary data via IPP.

  • Jobs can be canceled. The cancelation is logged.

  • Via the MONGO_EVENTS_COLLECTION_SIZE key, you can specify the size of the capped collection for storing the events.

Bug-Fixes:

  • Every POST and PUT route is checked for valid permission. If the permission check fails, 403 is returned.

  • If authenticating with Basic Auth is used and no htpasswd file has been specified with the HTPASSWD_FILE key, authentication will never be granted. Before it was granted to everyone without checking the user and the password.

  • The canceled jobs are taken into account with the timeline statistics.

  • The current.seal-attributes.finalEventSent flag is set in the job properties correctly when the final status has been sent to SAP.

  • The bug with canceling jobs has been fixed.

  • seal-ipp-checkin no longer starts with an unsupported SERVICE_URL, ://localhost:631 or tls://localhost:631 for example. Now, an HTTPS server is started if the SERVICE_URL starts with https://... or ipps://... and an HTTP server if it starts with http:// or ipp://. If the Service URL is unknown, an error is output instead of starting the server.

  • The bug with activating TLS has been fixed.

  • The job-statusIPP attribute is set correctly if the job is in the canceled or aborted state.

  • The bug that jobs checked-in via IPP were mistaken as SAP notifications and repeatedly notified about has been fixed.

  • The copies IPP attribute correctly starts at 1 instead of 0.

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