JetAdmin Question

[Chuck Ciesinski]

To all,

wea re on pa-risc 11.11 and want to upgrade our JetAdmin, D.06.21 to E.10.24 prior to conversion to Itanium servers. Does anyone see any proble with that?

TIA,

Chuck Ciesinski

[Pete Randall · Accepted solution]

Hi Chuck,

I'm currently using 10.34 on 11.11 with no difficulties.


Pete

[A. Clay Stephenson]

You should swremove the old JetAdmin software (which will leave your queues intact) and then swinstall the E.10.24 JetDirect software. You will then need to execute the "transferqueue local" command and specify "all" when prompted. This will modify your existing interface files to use the new path for the JetDirect executables. It takes only a few minutes at most to run.

The only gotcha's are highly customized interface files which might require some manual editing but if you run the out of the box interface files (or only slightly customized versions of the same) then tranferqueue will do all the heavy lifting for you.

[Bill Hassell]

If you really have the command jetadmin (found in /opt/hpnp/bin) on 11.11, then someone loaded the obsolete (since 1999) jetadmin code on your system. You need to remove it and load the hppi (HP Printer Installer). As mentioned, the print queues will remain but they will have obsolete printer scripts and mix/match is not a good thing.

Once you have installed the HPPI software, delete and re-add each printer (printer must be connected) using the removequeue and addqueue commands:

removequeue -q myprint23
addqueue -q myprint23 -h 12.34.56.78

That way, the generic network script will be correct and the individual printer scripts will be up to date. NOTE: if you made changes to model.orig scripts, you'll need to make the same changes to the new scripts. Since the majority of changes to printer scripts are usually banner options and duplex defaults, the modifyqueue command can do this for you (man modifyqueue).

The old jetadmin never supported any new printers after 1999 and has known Y2K bugs. Model scripts for new printers can be downloaded and added to HPPI but the generic net_ljx000 script handles virtually all HP PCL printers. HPPI will choose the printer script automatically if the printer can be contacted.

Note that I prefer IP address over hostname for printers. The complexities of maintaining dependable DNS entries for printers has been consistently painful so I just bypass the whole mess with IP's. And in case a printer moves, the above 2 commands will get it back again (no SAM needed).

[Tor-Arne Nostdal]

Hi Chuck
The correct way of doing it would be to follow the advices you've got.

We had a huge number of printers defined on our servers before and I had to do a "workaround" to get them fast up and running...

What I saw was that more or less everything was identical... except for the fact that the /opt/hpnp was "changed" to /opt/hpnpl
So - I created a link...
ln -s /opt/hpnpl /opt/hpnp
And - an alias for the old jetadmin command
alias jetadmin='hppi'

That might save you some work.... though it's a workaround and not according to the standard.

We have later removed all printing on the HP-UX and rather use some small Linux boxes do the spooling for us.

/Tor-Arne

[Chuck Ciesinski]

Bill,

Unfortunately true.

(/)#cd /opt/hpnp/bin
(/opt/hpnp/bin)#./jetadmin

*************************************************
* MAIN MENU *
* HP JetAdmin Utility for UNIX (Rev. D.06.21) *
*************************************************

1) Configuration (super-user only):
- configure printer, add printer to spooler

We are using an older version, which works well with SAP, where we have device names and associated IP addresses. Downloaded the new version Pete and Clay recommended and prepariong to test on an rx6600.

Chuck

[Tim Nelson]

Chuck,

The new version works great. One caveat. All your old model scripts point to the old /opt/hpnpn/. The newer software is changed to /opt/hpnpl. Simply create a link from /opt/hpnpn to /opt/hpnpl and all the old model scripts will work.

Did this many years ago when JetAdmin went away.

Another option would be to update all the model script with the newer ones but then you will have to go back in and modify or awk in the proper PERIPH= and PORT=

Try the 1st option.

[Bill Hassell]

Just a note about jetadmin and hppi -- they are really clunky compared to addqueue, removequeue and modifyqueue. (these 3 commands are the same in both versions) I have removed and added almost 100 printers in less than 5 minutes with this simple script:

#!/usr/bin/sh
# Find all JetDirect printer names and IP addresses
# and create remove and add scripts in /tmp
set -u
QTY=0
JETDIR="/opt/hpnpl/bin"
LPDIR="/etc/lp/interface"
RMPRN="/tmp/rmprn.sh"
ADDPRN="/tmp/addprn.sh"
umask 022
echo "# Remove JetDirect printers script" > $RMPRN
echo "# Add JetDirect printers script" > $ADDPRN

lpshut

for PRN in $(grep ^PERIPH= $LPDIR/*)
do
QUEUE=$(basename $(echo $PRN | cut -d: -f1))
IP=$(echo $PRN | cut -d= -f2)
echo "$JETDIR/removequeue -q $QUEUE" >> $RMPRN
echo "$JETDIR/addqueue -q $QUEUE -h $IP" >> $ADDPRN
let QTY=$QTY+1
done

chmod 755 $RMPRN $ADDPRN
echo "# $QTY JetDirect printers found"
echo "# $QTY JetDirect printers found" >> $RMPRN
echo "# $QTY JetDirect printers found" >> $ADDPRN

The results of this script generator will be 2 new scripts ready to run. The first is /tmp/rmprn.sh and running it will remove all the JetDirect printers (even though they were added by jetadmin). Then run /tmp/addprn.sh which puts them all back with their new scripts. You can run modifyqueue for selected printers to change options. Or you can modify the generator above to add the options: -t off -r off -b off.