migration troubles: DNS, printers

[Lisa Sorbo]

we are migrating from 1 machine running 10.20 to a 2nd machine with 11.0. I saved my printers with SAM and restored them on 11.0 with SAM. I used "rcp -p" to copy over everything in /etc/DNS. We use JetDirect devices for our printers.
1) I have a printer lp0002_1 at IP aaa.bbb.cc.ddd . I can issue lp -dlp0002_1 test.txt and see it queued with lpstat lp0002_1 --- but it never prints. Any ideas ?
2) on old system, I have the printer lp0002_1 also. I can issue "ping lp0002" because it is in my DNS table. In the DNS reversal, the entry is for lp0002.yyy.zzz. On the new system, I can issue "ping lp0002.yyy.zzz" but if I issue "ping lp0002" I get "unknown host lp0002". Any ideas on what I've missed?

thanks,
Lisa

[Steven E. Protter]

Hi Lisa,

If you have proper entries in /etc/hosts or records in your DNS server, you should be able to do all the pings noted in your post.

If the second server needs to resolve DNS requests, than to get the necessary functionality, you'll need to build a DNS server on it to match the functionality of the 10.20 server.

Alternatively, you could work out with some /etc/hosts entries on the new server.

to make sure /etc/hosts gets used, have this as your /etc/nsswitch.conf file.

hosts: dns[notfound=continue unavail=continue tryagain=continue] files

This goes dns first, then goes to files(/etc/hosts).

SEP

[Lisa Sorbo]

thanks. the nsswitch.conf you wrote looks like the one on my 10.20 system, so I copied it over and issued sig_named restart - still cannot ping lp0002. Also - my printers are not in /etc/hosts - only in the lists within /etc/DNS.
The only things in /etc/hosts on either system are IP addresses for the 2 UNIX boxes and some of the NT servers. Any other suggestions? I'm an application person that acts as sysadm and I find that I don't know enough internals to reason through this one.
Lisa

[Mark Greene_1 · Accepted solution]

you can add a "domain" statement to your /etc/resolv.conf file to specify the default domain.

In addition to the nsswitch.conf, did you copy over the named.boot file?

HTH
mark

[Lisa Sorbo]

1000 thanks!
I put the entry in /etc/resolv.conf and I can now ping lp0002 (and yes, I had already copied the named.boot).

now, if only I could print to that printer .

[W.C. Epperson]

Is printer lp0002_1 configured to Jetadmin via IP aaa.bbb.cc.ddd, or via DNS name lp0002? It's not clear what lp0002 has to do with lp0002_1.

If you can ping whatever the printer is configured as (IP or name), there's a chance the spooler "disabled" the printer when it saw it down. You check via "lpstat -t" and re-enable via "enable lp002_1". Good luck.

[Lisa Sorbo]

thanks for responding. my printers are working now, but to answer your question.
the DNS entry associates lp0002 with aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd .
when create the printer via sam - giving a printer name of lp0002 - sam automatically adds the _1 to make lp0002_1 . so when we ping the printer we ping lp0002, but when we print we use
lp -dlp0002_1

the problem was solved on the new box by using transferqueues to port over the queue defs and/or using removequeue and addqueue on the new box (or asking sam to remove & add again)