topic Re: Reset characters printing w/ CIFS print share in Operating System - OpenVMS

Reset characters printing w/ CIFS print share

Tschroeder — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:27:19 GMT

We recently upgraded to OpenVMS 8.4 (on Alpha) and are running CIFS 1.1 for file and print sharing. I have CIFS configured for printer shares and have been working on the print function.

I can now print from OpenVMS apps to our TelnetSym printers, however when I connect my XP machine to the OpenVMS printer shared via CIFS, I get a page after my print job with VMS;2 on it.

The Telnet sym settings have not changed from our earlier version of OpenVMS, the only thing that has changed that I can see is that we are now using CIFS instead of Advanced Server. Any ideas on how to get rid of the VMS;2?

Re: Reset characters printing w/ CIFS print share

Hoff — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:36:52 GMT

That VMS;2 stuff is probably originating from a device control library somewhere.

That particular character sequence is part of a control sequence that was used for formfeed suppression within SMBSRVSHR.EXE printing on OpenVMS, which implies the device control library is in use, but that the print queue may have changed?

CIFS 1.2 is current.

See http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/622 for related.

Re: Reset characters printing w/ CIFS print share

Tschroeder — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 19:41:08 GMT

Hoff- We did remove the vms;2 escape sequence, but then any job I printed from a PC to the CIFS shared printer gave me a leading and trailing blank page. Any way to suppress those?

Re: Reset characters printing w/ CIFS print share

Hoff — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 20:12:42 GMT

I do not generally recommend host-served printers with VMS serving those printers. (While there are some operating systems that can provide this reasonably well, managing and maintaining and printing directly to network-attached printers is easier than is using VMS for this task.)

Did the print queue (also) change?

Did the printer (also) change?

What I know about this is here:

http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/622

and (with some info on blank pages) here:

http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/129

Your reported behavior implies a misconfiguration of the device control library files, or a problem with CIFS, or a problem with the symbiont, or some sort of a printer configuration issue or printer change.

Get current on CIFS, with current patches for CIFS and for OpenVMS V8.4, and it would likely be best for you to call the folks at the HP support center directly. HP can get you the patches for VMS as well as any that are available for CIFS 1.2.

Re: Reset characters printing w/ CIFS print share

Brad McCusker — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 22:48:44 GMT

I can't emphasize enough what Hoff has said twice - get to V1.2 plus the patch set that is out there now.

I have no idea if it will fix your problem, I just know that there were many, many fixes in V1.2.

Brad McCusker
Software Concepts International
www.sciinc.com