how to connect a windows local printer to a hp-ux system

[Stefano_10]

I need to see from my unix system some remote printers that are connect to some lpt ports of a windows machines.
What do i have to do to use these printers from my unix system?
Thanks
Stefano

[Bill Hassell]

HP-UX can print to remote printers BUT Windows normally has remote printing disabled. The instructions to setup Windows to handle Unix-style (aka, lpd/lpr) printing varies widely between Win95 through WinXP.

Also, remote printing from HP-UX will perform no formatting so none of the -o options in lp will work, and plain ASCII files will 'stairstep' down the page because all Unix ASCII files have just a linefeed (LF) character at the end of each line, while Windows expects a crriage return (CR) and linefeed (just like the printer expects).

So once you get the Unix remote printing feature working on your PC, you'll need to tell all your HP-UX users to print ASCII files with:

ux2dos Some_File | lp -dremote_printer

The ux2dos filter translates the ASCII file to be compatible with Windows and attached printers.

Or you can avoid all these problems by removing the printer from the PC and connect the printer to the LAN with an HP JetDirect card. Now all the PCs and Unix systems can access the printer directly and no translation will be necessary. For both the PCs as well as HP-UX (and Sun, etc) you'll need to download the free HP Printer Installer from HP's website:

http://www.hp.com/cposupport/nonjsnav/netprn.html

Select Printer Installer software

[Shannon Petry]

You would be better off to move the printer to UNIX, and using Samba or CIFS to share this with the windows computer.

Regards,
Shannon

[Francisco J. Soler]

Hi Stefano, you can connect through samba. Install samba in your HP-UX box, then you can add a local printer then modify the script for that printer and put something like the attached one.

You can add two printers one with translate command active for text files and another one without translate command. (see the attached example)

Frank.

[Steven E. Protter]

Here is a link to the free software:

http://www.software.hp.com/cgi-bin/swdepot_parser.cgi/cgi/displayProductInfo.pl?productNumber=B8725AA

Here is setup documentation.

http://docs.hp.com/cgi-bin/fsearch/framedisplay?top=/hpux/onlinedocs/B8725-90021/B8725-90021_top.html&con=/hpux/onlinedocs/B8725-90021/00/00/8-con.html&toc=/hpux/onlinedocs/B8725-90021/00/00/8-toc.html&searchterms=setup%7cCIFS/9000&queryid=20030429-061922

SEP

[Fred Martin_1]

We use a peroduct called FacetWin, which creates a unix queue for the printer, but pipes the print jobs over to the PC that is managing the printer. Works quite well for us.

Additionally, FacetWin can create NT-like shares from the unix box if you like; so you can share unix directories and unix printers with your PCs (the unix box appears in Nethood on PCs).

It does a few other things too but that's primarily what we use it for.