Thanks to everyone who responded:
Burch Seymour RPTS bseymour_at_ns.encore.com
Ross Alexander rwa_at_athabascau.ca
Lucio Chiappetti lucio_at_ifctr.mi.cnr.it
Richard Sharpe, sharpe_at_ns.aus.com
Alex Nord Alex_Nord_at_Jabil.com
Philip Williams Philip.Williams_at_unisa.edu.au
I had done everything ok. The problem turned out to be the TCP/IP
service on the NT end had gotten into a funny state and needed
restarting...
I got some really good explicit answers and I'll summarise the steps
for anyone who is wanting to set this up since I had so much trouble
finding info on it..
1. TO SET UP PRINTING FROM DU DIRECTLY TO WINDOWS NT (without any
third party software)
* Set up your print queues on the Unix end using lprsetup. The
printcap should look like the following: (printer type is remote)
Lp8|UnixPrinterQueueName:\
:lf=/usr/adm/lp8err:\
:lp=:\
:rm=ntservername:\
:rp=ntqueuename:\
:sd=/usr/spool/lpd8:
NOTE: the printcap seems to handle "special" unix characters such as
space and brackets which I thought was nice - it means you don't have
to modify existing NT print queue names.
* On the NT end (with NT4 at least):
You need to start the "TCP/IP Print Server" service on the NT4 server
after installing "TCP/IP Printing". This does the lpd stuff on the NT
end.
You can check this is running from the unix end by telneting to the
printer port on the NT server:
telnet ntservername 515
This comes up with a message similar to the following if the service
isnt running
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused
lpc status UnixPrinterQueueName
also returns a line about "waiting for ntserver to come up" when you
try to print to the queue.
If it is working the telnet just connects and hangs.
If the TCP/IP service on NT is not doing anything - on your NT print
server click - Start - Control Panel - Services and make certain you
have TCP/IP print services installed and running. For some reason if
you install it, it defaults to being off after a reboot. Go figure...
Anyway, you can change that to auto run in that panel.
* Other problems.
I found this all worked ok if I was just using a text queue. But for
some reason the NT queues were wrapping the raw postscript in
postscript and it was coming out as text - ie the raw postscript code
was being printed.
Burch suggested the following as a solution to this. I haven't managed
to chase it up yet but hope it should fix that particular problem:
There is also a problem with postscript printers from DU through NT in
that you will get the text of the postscript file printer and not the
result of the postscript commands. There is a fix for that on the
Microsoft Knowledge base. It involves changing a registry entry. We
did it a long time ago and I don't remember the details. But once you
do it, it's fixed.
Another gentleman said:
After You've done the installation and started the service, It should
be working. You will possibly have problems with page size and the
like. I was not able to solve the problem completelly, but I've got
better results when the NT Operator touched the default page size for
the NT Printer (i.e: Windows software was not impacted, because page
size is correctly transported from workstation to print queue, Unix
software was able to print correctly only text format and the NT Queue
decided correctly where to cut pages).
2. PRINTING FROM DU TO NT using SAMBA and SMBCLIENT.
This was suggested by both Ross and Lucio as an alternative.
I'll include Ross' whole response in case it is useful to anyone. I've
played with Samba and it's a great product but for various reasons
we'd prefer not to add another variable to the equation:
By far the easiest route is to install smbclient and then write 'if'
filters that use it to deliver into NT's native netbuei printer
sharing mechanism.
Here's an example from my printcap:
ps|bjc600|Ghostscript device bjc600:\
:af=/var/spool/bjc600/acct:\
:if=/usr/local/share/ghostscript/filt/direct/bjc600/gsif:\
:lf=/var/spool/bjc600/logfile:\
:lp=/dev/lp0:\
:mx#0:\
:rs:\
:sd=/var/spool/bjc600:\
:sf:\
:sh:
and the relevant part of
/usr/local/share/ghostscript/filt/direct/bjc600/gsif is:
gs -q -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=${device} -r360 -sOutputFile=- - |\
smbclient //rossalex/canon CANON -P -c 'printmode graphics; print -'
which runs the ghostscript (postscript to canon escape sequences)
filter then pipes that into 'smbclient -P' to submit the print stream
to my Win95 box's shared printer device, CANON.
-----Original Message-----
From: Gray, Sue [SMTP:sjgray_at_subcorp.com.au]
Sent: Tuesday, 7 July 1998 11:35
To: 'alpha-osf-managers_at_ornl.gov'
Subject: Printing from DU via NT4
Hello,
I am trying to set up both text and postscript printers from DU. I
thought it would be a good thing to be able to go through the NT print
server as all the existing queues for Apple and Other printers are
already there.
I've checked the archives but there didn't seem to be much in there
about this. Can anyone give me some ideas.. The test printcap file I
set up was as follows where I have the ntservers ip address for rm and
the NT print queue name for rp.. However it doesn't seem to work.
lp8|8|cm_ea:\
:lf=/usr/adm/lp8err:\
:lp=:\
:rm=ntserver:\
:rp=CM_EA:\
:sd=/usr/spool/lpd8:
Has anyone done this successfully and would they be able to give me
some ideas on printcaps for various types of printers and what you
need to do on the NT end?
TIA
Sue
Sue Gray
sjgray_at_subcorp.com.au
Network Analyst
Australian Submarine Corporation
Received on Fri Jul 10 1998 - 03:59:17 NZST