Hi
Many thanks to all people for their quick reply, that was of a great help to go into the details
and ask the updated questions to the suppliers.
As a personal comment, let say I have been really more impressed by the Digital service than by the
HP one (seems Digital Unix is still unrecognized by HP)
Knut.Hellebo_at_nho.hydro.com
karnott_at_tamucc.edu
pobrien_at_draco.harvard.edu
helgi_at_ott.is
jp.croskery_at_queens-belfast.ac.uk
carole_at_callutheran.edu
rockwell_at_rch.dec.com
jbw_at_ac.duke.edu
meyer_at_aramix.enet.dec.com
My original posting was :
>Hi,
>After several unsuccessful attempts to write the right /etc/printcap file that would allow me to send jobs
>to a printer plugged onto the network, I wonder if some of you could explain me how to proceed, if possible
> via a step by step briefing.
>The printer is an HP 4Si with a Network card HP Jet Direct.
>The system is running OSF 2.1
>I have got from DEC the hplaserpsof filter wich seems to be needed, according to previous e-mails discussing
>on this topic.
>I have setted up two shell scripts that are called by the if and of entries and execute the DECspool program
>which is provided into the NAC130 subset. This program is supposed to act as a relay between the if and of
>entries and the ip address of the printer itself.
>With all of this stuff, I am still wondering why I am unable to conclude. Any help would increase my personal
>self-confidence.
>Jean-Claude.Petiot_at_iea.fr
>Agence Internationale de l'Energie - Paris
My conclusions are as follow :
- a lot of people provided a printcap which includes a line like " :rm=ipnodename:\" , and mentionned
this was quite simple to setup. I really was wondering why this was not working on my site, until the local
Digital support center asked the right question "is your printer setted up to run a local lpd server ?"
The answer came a few hours later with the version of the JetDirect network card. The card must be referenced
"J255xx" instead of "J2372A" (which is the ref of the card plugged into my HP4si).
So, I assume all the people who have a printcap with a rm entry are equipped with a J255 family card
(would be interested by a quick check)
- thanks to the local Digital support, we nevertheless managed to get prints printed out,
with a lpd located on the Alpha machine.
We were unable to get it running through the DECspool program I mentionned in my e-mail.
Instead, I installed the nic_print daemon which comes with the DEC5100 laser printer distribution.
The installation creates a pseudo-device /dev/nic/printername. Then you start the printer daemon with a command
like #/usr/nic/nic_print /dev/nic/printername printeripaddress printeripport &
(Fyi the printer port on a hp4si is 9100)
The daemon handles text and postscript prints, so you don't have to bother with two separate queues.
All my printing test worked fine, with the input and output filters supplied into the nicprint distribution.
It's however a bit more complicated than the previous way with rm. I plan to ask for an upgrade of my JetDirect
network card.
- I got also questions on where to get the hplaserpsof filter. This filter is included in OSF v3.x.
As I was running V2.1, I got it from my local DEC support. I do not make use of it for the moment. I suspect
a day will come where the filters provided for the DEC5100 will not satisfy all users needs. At this time, I
will see what I can do with the hplaser filters.
- some people mentionned the JetAdmin utility provided by HP to manage the JetDirect card. The problem comes
from the fact that it seems to be impossible to get a distribution for Digital Unix (only HP-UX, SunOs and
Solaris supported). In any case, my understanding is that JetAdmin is not really mandatory.
Hope this helps
Jean-Claude
Received on Tue May 23 1995 - 06:08:54 NZST