hppi and PCL and MF printer question..

[rmueller58]

I've got a bit of an issue. Thought I'd run it past the crew first.

I have one school district I support that adds printers willy-nilly, because of the sheer number of printers I've used the command lines such as "addqueue" to add the multitude. We requested that they standardized on HP compliant printing so we can use the "-o" options.. But they find it in the heart to see if they can get one by.

However when they bring in an "off brand" (non_HP) MF device into the mix I have to jump thru hoops.

I use HPPI setup the queue manually, first I get a community string error because these devices don't enable SNMP by default. I bypass the SNMP stuff, get a test print to go using the net_lj5x driver, I set banner off and true EOJ off, the job printer but we're getting one page with the "@" on the top left of an otherwise blank page.

This "device" happens to be a
Toshiba E-Studio810.. As usual the "vendor" is less then helpful, and the last thing we can do with 500 + queues is to screw with is adding print filters with lpadmin..

Any thoughts on what might be required, i'd appreciate it..

Rex M - Systems Engineer
ESU#3

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

I suppose the first question that you must address is: Is theis printer a JetDirect device? If not then adding the printer with HPPI is hopeless. You must set it up as a Remote Printer (ie one that speaks the lpd protocol).

[rmueller58]

Clay,

they can port 9100 turned on and I can see it with HPPI..

[rmueller58]

Gad,
I am so scattered,

Clay, they turned 9100 on, the "device" is supposely PCL5 compliant, I can send the -o sequences to the thing but irregardless we get the EOJ page at the end with a single "@" sign on the page.

Rex M - Systems Engineer
ESU#3 Omaha, NE

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Well, here you go but it depends upon which controller is in the copier as to whether this will work:

http://www.eid.toshiba.com/support/drivers/GL-1020.shtml

[rmueller58]

It is GL-1020..

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Then the Force is with you; download and install and you should be good to go. It seems that you work in an environment where policies are merely suggestions.

[rmueller58]

Buy em' books, buy em' books and all they do is eat the pages.. I've had to beat some people up side the head a few times..

Thanks for the assist Clay.. I downloaded the toshiba hack for administration and setup the queue.

I am waiting on a call back from the onsite LAN team to see if my test print is not sending the EOJ..

Have a great one..

Rex

[Bill Hassell]

The Force is with you my son...normally, a non-HP printer will never communicate with port 9100 and they usually use some variation of Epson escape sequences. The first thing to do is to eliminate *all* software by printing with hpnpf. This is located in /opt/hpnpl/bin and is the program that actually sends data to JetDirect (and wannabe's like the Toshiba). The good news is that it sends the data with nothing extra except CR/LF processing (which is required for plain ASCII files. Start with:

/opt/hpnpl/bin/hpnpx -x 12.34.56.78 -N /etc/profile

This should create a couple of plain ASCII pages and no special codes at the end of the file or an extra blank page. If true, you'll need the change the printer script for the Toshibas to a dumbed-down version of PCL. Starting with the HP LaserJet 3Si and series 4, they implement PJL (Printer Job Language) which is heavily linked to the hardware. PCL is a formatting language while PJL is more of a hardware control language (duplex, paper handling, etc).

Since Toshiba won't provide a reasonable compatibility model, just replace the Toshiba's model script with PCL3 from the directory /usr/lib/lp/model. That will get rid of any PCL/PJL issues.

If the hpnpf test still produces the @ symbol, then this is a Toshiba network card issue, probably an incompatibility with the handshake protocol used by JetDirect. Your only choice then is to delete all the printers and add them back as remote printers. That should work better since it is the native protocol for all non-HP network cards. Toshuba will have to provide you with the card's internal printer name. Use SAM to configure the printer as a remote printer.

NOTE: like all remote printers, you lose *all* -o options.

[rmueller58]

Bill,

When we brought this system online, it became apparent early on I would get bloody if we didn't standard on a friendly mechanism to print with 19 school districts and 300-400 + physical printer queues add to that the database entries for 4 possible orientation queues per printer, needless to say I scripted my installation based on the hp standard so it will create the queue and insert records into the database and take the pain of setting up a printer down to a science.
Then the vendors of the business products started rolling in multifunction crap in and really rained on the parade.. I've tried hppi, ez-spooler, lpadmin, and we went through the ringer with our advisory committee and make "Strong" recommendations to the districts..
1. Verify your printer or device is HP/Canon5 compatible,
2. If it is not to contact us in advance of setting up the damn thing.

You know the drill, "screw" the procedures, "give to rex!, he don't mind it, he'll do anything"

Oh well enuf bitching.
Printers and lame users drive me nutz at times otherwise I really do love my job.

If someone has created a simple method of creating filters and queues with the BSD stuff i'd bite.. I may do it and sell it for boocoo bucks..

Now I wait, Minolta "bug" fixed their firmware and it is pointing at this as the "cause" of the EOJ stuff on ux-11..

Thanks all..

[Bill Hassell]

Multifunction printers are definitely not printers and all of them (HP included) have suffered from kitchen-sink-itis (a colloquial term that means throwing everything into a package including the kitchen sink). The biggest problem is that printers were orignially designed as one way devices...send text to it and it prints. Now, printers can print graphics, return status, create unsolicited requests for service such as low ink, receive faxes, scan documents, etc. Naturally, all of this is designed for only one platform, the PC. And even then, only certain versions (Win95 may not be supported, etc)

So Unix systems are essentially locked out as these simple printers turn into do-everything appliances (well, it looks like a printer...). All this explains why multifunction boxes are so hard to integrate into Unix.

Since there are so many of these printers and setting up specialized queues is a major task, you might want to look at Taricon Technologies's Xi-Text (http://www.taricon.com), a print spooler management tool that spans multiple HP-UX (and other Unix flavors) systems and can likely work around all the printer management issues you have. It 's capabilities are way beyond the SysV lp spooler that is standard with HP-UX.

[rmueller58]

Bill, Thanks for the info.

I will look into it..