LPD ports talk on 9100, my printer listens on 515

[Brian J Noftsier]

OK, HP UX 11i running an Oracle App. I have 140 Jetdirect attached printers that work fine. I have 3 Xerox DC220/230 that only appear to listen on 515. Now, I am not running NFS or SAMABA so redirecting to a Windows queue will not work. Can I define,, in HPPI the socket (rather than just the IP) of the remote printer? It looks like I cannot change the printer listening port but since Unix lets one do almost anything one wants can I change the LPD sending port? (the caveat being it has to be granular - I need my Jetdirect printers to still play nice-nice over port 9100TCP).

Thanks.

[Jay Newman]

I recently asked the same question at my shop, where we have a mixed server environment and a variety of LAN printers.
Some of the other servers (different O/S) had the ability to create each print queue and specify both the I/P and socket number.
HP's reponse was to the effect that they only supported JetDirect printers, i.e., no change to socket.
Our work around is to manage the print queues on the more "flexible" servers, and create remote print queues on the HP UX servers.
I.E., on my HP UX server there is a queue "develop1" which is a remote printer "develop1" on server "xyz".
Generates a bit more network traffic, but at the moment there does not appear to be an alternative.

[Rita C Workman]

I have a similar setup....this may help you.

Take a look at manpage on rlp and rlpdaemon. You can set up a remote printer via SAM and thus you will print to the remote printer using the rlpdaemon and it should hit the 515 port. This changes absolutely nothing to the other jet direct printers.

Hope this helps you,
Rita

[Rita C Workman]

Oops, I forgot to mention, also make sure the information for this remote printer shows up in your /etc/hosts.......

Rita

[Brian J Noftsier]

The printer is in ect/hosts but I also have it in DNS (Linux box) and we've even tried hard coding the IP using HPPI. The Unix guru and I wil try this. Thanks for the help. If it works I'll add points to your second post.

I think I am doing ok for only having seen HP UX for just under a month (I'm an NT guy but quickly trying to get into Linux and Unix)

[Bill Hassell]

HP JetDirect printers (and the supporting software) use a proprietary port (9100) for two way communication. The protocol is also proprietary so JetDirect (ie, Network Printers in SAM) will not function with non-JetDirect network cards.

Later (mid-90's) HP added lpd/lpr support (also known as RFC 1179) to the JetDirect firmware, which is how non-HP network cards work as print servers.

So for HP JetDirect printers, use the SAM Network Printer interface or JetAdmin or HPPI software. For all other network printers, use SAM and specify Remote Printer.

NOTE: for all Remote Printers, there must be a name associated withe the printer inside the network card. JetDirect cards have two names, text and raw, but you'll need the network card documentation for the other interfaces.

Note also that a Remote Printer accepts no -o options like -olandscape or -odouble as these options must be processed by the print server and the network card can't do this task. That means that plain ASCII files may print stairstepped down the page (due to the single LF character at the end of every line). You'll need to become familiar with ux2dos.

[Brian J Noftsier]

Question for Jay - how do you do that? I would prefer to have all my printers hosted on an NT box but I don't know how to make the HP UX side talk to them. If you can had me a print out or walk me through it I woudl be grateful.



Or - for the HP rep - I tried using a Xerox printer and its known the internal host name is LP (uppercase). In SAM I define it as printer queue bjn, host 192.168.247.100 and printer name LP. Is that the right way?

[Bill Hassell]

I would question the use of NT as a print server when all it does is to store and forward every print job...it adds no value and doubles the network traffic.

However, you can enable lpd capability on NT and it will act as a remote print server for Unix boxes.

NOTE: lpr/lpd assumes all output is ready to print, but HP-UX remote printing requires the remote side to perform any formatting, specifically ASCII text. Since Unix ASCII files have a simple LF at the end of each line, this will stairstep down the printer and off the edge of the paper. You'll have to print every ASCII file using the ux2dos filter program as in:

dos2ux MyFileName | lp -dremote-printer

Yet another reason not to use an intermediate, non-HP-UX print server. JetDirect handles ASCII files just fine.

As far as the Xerox print server, LP or lp is something you'll have to try out. Without accurate documentation, you'll have to try both to see what works. And just like the NT box, ASCII files will stairstep unless preformatted on the HP-UX side.

[Brian J Noftsier]

Since I'm printing from an Oracle App I can't very well tell it to format each page. Perhaps in the next release HP will put in a way to define the printer when using a remote printing queue. I am not sure I like the solutions I'e been backed into - dropping and external JetDirect off each printer.

I guess a kludge solution is better than no solution. =)

[Andreas Voss]

Hi,

have a look at this thread:
It shows how to change the port within jetadmin printer interface script.

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,1150,0x9d925220af9bd5118ff10090279cd0f9,00.html

Perhaps it may help you

Regards