THANKS very much to the sun-managers readers who responded! I
received some first-class advice. Respondents included:
Tom Vayda
Tim Carlson
Arthur Dent
Casper Dik
Marco Greene
John Ballard
Kevin Colagio
Roger Hampel
Jim Harmon
I ended up "faking" each Sun workstation into thinking the
remote standalone printer was local. This allowed me to
use lpadmin to define printer type, file contents, and interface.
This is the command I used (suggested by Sun technical support person):
rsh $host lpadmin -p $prt -v /dev/null -I postscript -T PS
-i /etc/lp/model/netstandard -o dest=$prt
To re-iterate the problem.....within admintool, you don't have many
configuration options for remote printers. You can only type in the
printer name and print server. The details of the configuration are
located on the printer server, and must be altered there. (NOTE: admintool
is limited in its remote printer configuration options, but
lpadmin on the command line offers much more).
However, most of our printers are NOT attached to a workstation acting
as a print server. Our printers have internal disks and
their own IP addresses. These printers worked fine under Solaris 2.5.1,
and printed everything, regardless of whether it was ascii or postscript.
But under Solaris 2.6, ascii print jobs quit printing.
I didn't want users to enter a filter for ascii printing.
I wanted the whole ascii/postscript issue to be transparent to them.
Also, we didn't want to dedicate a workstation to print serving.
I want to "play around" with some of the options suggested
by the sun-managers readers - there might be a simpler solution.
For example, John Ballard suggested this method:
When setting up the printer you could try using -s qms114!text
(This works when setting up an apple printer, so the queue autosenses
postscript and text.)
ORIGINAL POSTING:
-----------------
We have a big problem - under Solaris 2.6, our standalone printers
will print postscript files, but not ascii files! For example,
an application like Mathematica puts a print file in postscript
format before sending it off to the printer. The file prints o.k.
But if I type "lp /etc/group" on the command line, it won't print!
Most of our printers have internal disks and function as standalones -
that is, they are not connected to a print server. These printers
were defined as remote printers under Solaris 2.5.1 with this
definition:
Printer: qms114
Print Server: qms114
In other words, the printer and the print server are one and the same.
We can still do this under Solaris 2.6, but the printers only print postsript
files. To print ascii, we need to define an alias for the ascii printer.
For example, I can define "qms114a" as the ascii printer, while qms114
is the default postscript filter. This is very messy - there's no way
the users will remember the aliases and when they're supposed to use them.
A filter is another option, but there again, I don't want to use a command-line
option.
I could write a script to test for the postscript header and route print
jobs to the appropriate print destination. I'm also looking at LPRng,
although we're reluctant to install it.
Has anybody else run into this problem? How did you get around it? Is
there something obvious I've missed?
THANKS for your help!
Lisa
***************************************************************************
RESPONSES
***************************************************************************
From: Tom Vayda <vayda_tom@jpmorgan.com>
I had a similar problem with some Apple printers, modified the printer entry in admintool to be "postscript" rather than "any".
Hope this works for you.
Tom
******************************************
From: Tim Carlson <tim@santafe.edu>
On Wed, 17 Jun 1998, Lisa Becktold {CADIG STAFF} wrote:
> We have a big problem - under Solaris 2.6, our standalone printers
> will print postscript files, but not ascii files!
Have you told lpadmin to accept any type of input?
lpadmin -I any -p queuename
******************************************
From: "Arthur Dent" <vermilue@teluq.uquebec.ca>
Hi
I had that problem before and I defined a ascii filter for the printer...
or in the printer definitions I declared it as postcript and then I was able
to use lpr <ascii file>
Arthur
******************************************
From: Casper Dik <casper@holland.Sun.COM>
>We can still do this under Solaris 2.6, but the printers only print postsript
>files. To print ascii, we need to define an alias for the ascii printer.
>For example, I can define "qms114a" as the ascii printer, while qms114
>is the default postscript filter. This is very messy - there's no way
>the users will remember the aliases and when they're supposed to use them.
This means that you've defined the printer content type
incorrectly.
It must be defined as "postscript" and you probably defined it as "any".
Casper
******************************************
From: "Marco Greene" <cmgreene@netcom.ca>
You should be able to tell the printer to print both. Under admintool,
content portion usually gives you some of the following options:
Postscript
ASCII
Postscript & ASCII
All
I think there are a few more....but this would be worth a try. From the
command line, I believe it is the -I option with lpadmin, but don't quote me
on that one, I have to look it up myself everytime I go to do it.
Hope this helps,
Marco
cmgreene@netcom.ca
******************************************
From: John Ballard <johnb@ocean.washington.edu>
A few suggestions in reply to your query concerning printing
in Solaris 2.6:
1. Look at faq #7329 from www.qms.com/support/documentation. (You
may want to search their database by keying on solaris.)
2. When setting up the printer you could try using
-s qms114!text
(This works when setting up an apple printer, so the queue autosenses
postscript and text.)
john ballard
johnb@ocean.washington.edu
******************************************
From: Roger Hampel <hampel@Mathematik.Uni-Marburg.de>
>> Hi:
Hi Lisa!
>>
>> We have a big problem - under Solaris 2.6, our standalone printers
>> will print postscript files, but not ascii files! For example,
>> an application like Mathematica puts a print file in postscript
>> format before sending it off to the printer. The file prints o.k.
>> But if I type "lp /etc/group" on the command line, it won't print!
If you specify a printer as remote, EVERY Solaris Machine will try to send
print jobs directly to the Print-Server running on the printer (e.g. HP
JetDirect) In that case you have no possibility to determine whether the
printer can handle the job, every job is submitted unseen. If ASCII-Files
won't print in this case it is a matter of the printer. We run HP Printers and
when printing this way you have to first convert Linefeeds in ASCII-Documents
to CR/Linefeeds. Another problem arises with connect-timeouts. As EVERY Host
tries to connect to the printer you have to specify a very small
timeout-value, otherwise print-jobs may take hours to print!
In the following I try to describe the configuration as we use it here.
First: Let all Solaris-Machines print to a Solaris Print-Server. This is then
the only one that tries to connect to the remote printer.
Install the printer on that machine as a network-printer (device=/dev/null,
model-script=/usr/lib/lp/model/netstandard) If you specify "simple" as a valid
content-type you must convert the file as described above prior to printing.
If you do not specify "simple" as valid you must install a printfilter thatconverts simple to postscript.
Hope this helps...
Roger
******************************************
Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 11:50:13 -0400
From: Jim Harmon <jharmon@telecnnct.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: Lisa Becktold {CADIG STAFF} <lisa@usna.navy.mil>
Subject: Re: HELP - Sol 2.6 printers/ascii files
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Lisa Becktold {CADIG STAFF} wrote:
>
> Hi:
>
> We have a big problem - under Solaris 2.6, our standalone printers
> will print postscript files, but not ascii files! For example,
> an application like Mathematica puts a print file in postscript
> format before sending it off to the printer. The file prints o.k.
> But if I type "lp /etc/group" on the command line, it won't print!
Have you tried "lp -T text /etc/group" ?
-- Jim Harmon The Telephone Connection jim@telecnnct.com Rockville, Maryland
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:12:42 CDT