IP printing from Universe

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi to all
Does anyone have experiance of setting up IP printing from UNIVERSE.
At present my printing is to terminal servers (DDFA, OCD etc).

Thanks in advance.

[Greg Hall]

Hi Paula,

As it happens I'm working on a system right now which runs Universe and IP printing. The client uses some terminal servers with DDFA and ocd processes. They also have numerous JetDirect printers attached to the lan, which don't require DDFA.
It's not clear what your specific question is, please elaborate.

cheers, Greg

[Tim Malnati]

IP printing through a terminal server is problematic. The terminal server does not have the appropriate software running to correctly control spool jobs. The problem is particularly bad if you have more than one host sending jobs to a printer. In this case you will often see a situation where the jobs get mixed with each other; even worse if you are using any sort of form printing or font selection. My strong suggestion is to use network print servers instead (JetDirects are best where they fully integrate with the JetAdmin software). The installed NIC interface on HP printers is a full JetDirect print server as well.

The Universe spooler can spool directly to a device or it can send jobs through the unix spooler. I almost always configure through the unix spooler where the JetAdmin software handles printer model configuration very nicely. This also allows full unix application printing to the same printer. The only time I deviate from this methodology is for single purpose printers like check printers, bar code printers, etc. UV can handle both types defined within the UV spooler simultaniously. HP printers are a breeze but others can be dealt with. UV 9.5 is a little more troublesome where this version became fully source migrated with Informix's NT version of Universe. What this generally means is that you will often need to use the JetAdmin dumb driver that adds CR's to the data stream when setting up line printers.

Chapter 10 of the UV Admin Manual has a comprehensive discussion of how the Universe spooler works and the UV Administration menus are adequate for controlling most UV spooler issues. The Univese 'driver' to the unix spooler is nothing more than a standard lp command that passes the job along. A common mistake is not having adequate permissions for these drivers or the uvspool directory. As you probably know by now, Universe has the ability to store spool jobs indefinitely. My strong suggestion is to have your operations people closely monitor things or write a cron job to clean things periodically. Be sure to use the Universe usa, usm and usp commands with anything like this, rm will get rid of the file but leave usplog corrupt.

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi Tim and Greg,

In retrospect my question could have been a little more clearer,but Tim has pointed me in the right direction.
I am very impressed by the quick responce to my first question on the forum.
And Tims polite way of saying RTFM is much appreciated.
Thanks Guys.

[Greg Hall]

Yep, choice one Tim. There's a few good points in there for me as well. seeya.