Giving up: Looking to hire someone to setup Linux printing

[Brad Ummer]

I've been trying for over a week now to get our remote Linux server to print to our LaserJet 5N. (Please see my post on 10/24 "Trying to print from RedHat Linux to remote LaserJet 5N".) I've gotten it to print, but very slowly (90-120 seconds for a 10K postscript file). This same file printed from a Windows box takes less than 5 seconds. I have to assume that there is something not set up correctly. Can anyone recommend a company or freelance individual who could set this up for us? Thanks.

[Eugen Cocalea]

Hi,

I've found something interesting on an Linux mailing list archive. See this link:

http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/net/9711.1/0059.html

Ah, and as I am writing, some pros and cons about LJ5Ns (see the whole thread):

http://kalamazoolinux.org/mailarchive/0105/msg00165.html

By the way, those links I've found issuing a search on Google with 'Laserjet 5N Linux'

My opinion, try again before paying someone to do it.

E.

[Eugen Cocalea]

Hi,

Don't give up. Let's dig together.

bkp (eugen):~/mizerii>ls -la *.ps
-rw-r--r-- 1 eugen wheel 340915 Oct 24 12:24 enterprise1200_spec.ps
bkp (eugen):~/mizerii>time lpr enterprise1200_spec.ps

real 0m0.153s
user 0m0.010s
sys 0m0.000s
bkp (eugen):~/mizerii>

So, it seems that it only takes a split of a second to send a 300k ps to the queue and it took about 10 seconds to print it (physically) on our OLD and much-worked HP LaserJet 4Si printer.

See attached file for details. Anything else, just ask. Hope I can help.

E.

[Brad Ummer]

Eugen-

Thanks for the kind offer and the breakdown of all your conf files. Let me start by saying that while I've been working with server end of linux for a few years, I'm pretty much a novice when it comes to setting it up. I can edit config and other files pretty well, but I lack some of the basic knowledge of how everything on the system is interacting. I had a local company set a new server box for me and install Red Hat 7.1 (which was done by the company's one-and-only linux guy). When he was unable to get the printing stuff working without the long delays, I turned to these lists. Based on info I got here, I subsequently had him install CUPS. (Was this a good move??) I had read and begun to understand a good bit about lpr, but now that CUPS is installed, I'm back to near-zero knowledge about how this beast is printing. For example, with the current setup, my /etc/conf file is completely empty. Is this supposed to be like this? I have no idea. I wouldn't even know if he messed up the installation. Hence my frustration.

Add to that the fact that the printer in question is located about an hour's drive from me in a busy office, and the office staff get quite annoyed when I tie up their printer for 2 minutes at a time (during which time they can't print). Plus after I attempt the print, I need to call them up and have someone go and check to see if anything printed. And every once in a while what prints out is 50 plus pages of postscript junk (they just love that).

My fear is that I'm going to spend the next month beating my head against a wall when a pro could have took one look at the system and said, "Here, just uncomment this line...". None the less, I thank you for you offer to help. I've posted requests for freelancers on a bunch of different sites, and to every techie I knew, yet didn't get a single response. So it looks like it's time to roll up my sleeves and try again.

On that note, do you think that installing CUPS was a good idea, do you know anything about it, and should by /etc/conf file really be empty?

[Brad Ummer]

Sorry, I meant that my /etc/printcap file is empty...