Networking a plotter

[MarkSyder]

Make and model of plotter withheld in case they are the reason my original thread was removed.

I am moving all my servers, workstations, etc. to a new network. The plotter is old and does not appear to allow telnet or http access, so I'm hoping it takes its ip address from the hp-ux system. Can anyone see any flaw in the following plan?

1. Move plotter to a different port

2. amend plotter's ip address in NIS hosts file

3. amend plotter's ip address in appropriate DNS files

4. arp -s

The man page for arp doesn't include anything about the ip address. Will the plotter take the address from the NIS/DNS files?

Mark Syder (like the drink but spelt different)

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Mark,

Maybe this link can help you.

http://www.calgraphinc.com/Support/network.html

Regards,
Robert-Jan

[MarkSyder]

Thanks Robert-Jan.

That link had the right make of plotter but not the right model and didn't help.

This is what I've tried:

1. arp -a to obtain plotter MAC address

2. have the plotter moved to a port on the new network

3. change the plotter details in NIS and DNS

4. arp -s

The arp -s command gives the response:
SIOCSARP: Invalid argument.

Any ideas?

Mark

[Peter Nikitka]

Hi Mark,

check the syntax of your arp command - should be
arp -s hostname mac_address temp

mfG Peter

[MarkSyder]

Are you sure? According to the man page, I only use temp if I want the entry to be temporary.

Mark

[Peter Nikitka]

Hi,

yes, you are correct with the 'temp' parameter.
Nevertheless you told, that you gave 'ipadress' as a third parameter, which is wrong.

With using 'temp', you could try to reach your plotter with the changed IP-address as a testing change.

Another possibility is the use of the bootp protocol - older networked stuff was feeded by this via /etc/bootptab. Perhaps you can give this a try.

mfG Peter

[MarkSyder]

arp isn't working because I don't have administrator access to the plotter, so I've attached it to the parallel port of a workstation.

Any ideas as to which printer model I should use?

Mark

[Bill Hassell]

The "dumb" model script is fine. It performs no plotter-specific changes to the data stream. There is a "dumbplot" script but it assumes the plotter is an HP plotter or uses the HP-GL plotter language.

[MarkSyder]

Thanks Bill - didn't need to try your solution as a colleague managed to change the ip address and it is working fine.

Thanks again for all the suggestions.

Mark