Printer connection problems

[Dan Maul]

I'm not able to ping a printer located in cork Ireland. Iâ m thinking the problem could be is the printer name has underscores in it. Iâ m attempting to connect using HP-UX 11.i and the printer is a ricoh 450. Iâ m not able to use jetadmin to configure the printer. But I have entered the printer name in /etc/hosts file.

[doug mielke]

Can any other system at your location ping the IP printer?

Can other systems at the remote location print or ping to it?

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Unless this Ricoh printer will emulate an HP JetDirecxt card or is connected to an external JetDirect, you will not be able to configure it through JetAdmin. JetAdmin is obsolete and should be replaced with JetDirect software anyway. You should be able to configure it as a Remote (as opposed to a Network (JetDirect)) printer.

You may not be able to ping for a number of reason including ICMP's being not forwarded by routers along the way. The very first thing to do is get hostname resolution out of the way. Try pinging or telneting using the IP address. If that works then hostname resolution is your problem; otherwise, do a traceroute IP_Address and see where it stops.

[Dan Maul]

I can ping from a windows box, but not from Unix.

[Dan Maul]

If I do a traceroute it give me 30 hops max and 40 byte packets. This printer will not interface with Jetdirect either.

[Mic V.]

The Windows box might be on a different subnet with different ports blocked (i.e., ICMP allowed on the Windows subnet to reach the printer but not from the subnet with the HP-UX box).

If you have nmap on your HP-UX box, you might be able to "ping" a different way with a string like "nmap -O printer_name".

When you say "not able to use JetAdmin," can you be more specific with the errors? There is at least one output message from JetAdmin that looks like an error but really isn't (I think, in fact, it's when ICMP is disabled); you can just finish the config and it works fine.

Mic

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I suppose I should have been a bit more clear. Unless this Ricoh support the JetDirect protocol (port 9100) then neither JetAdmin or JetDirect software will work. You must then configure as a Remote printer using the lpd protocols.

If the traceroute fails using the IP address then you definitely have networking problems although traceroute could be trying a bad route if your host has multiple lan cards. In trat case, issue a trace -s desired_src_ip_address remote_ip_address.

Are the Windows boxes that are able to ping this printer on the same subnet as your UNIX host? If not then you could still have router filters blocking ICMP's.

[Dan Maul]

When I tired to configure the printer using jetdirect, I couldn't get past inputing the IP address. It can not make communication with it. Also I'm not familiar with nmap and can not do a man on such topic.

[doug mielke]

You'll need to resolve the basic communication issue with that address, then try to use lpr or remote printing features.

If you can ping it from windows, you should be able to ping from Unix as well.
Do all your testing with IP address, and not name, to avoid /etc/host or DNS issues.

Can you ping from unix to any other address on the printer subnet?

[Dan Maul]

Clay,

I have the printer configured as a remote printer, and have 3 jobs waiting in the queue.
But I'm stuck until I can figure out how to ping this thing.

[Bill Hassell]

Until you can communicate with the remote printer, the jobs will stay in the queue. Printing over the Internet is simple when there are no firewalls and security controls. But since these are a fact of life, you must work directly with your network administrators, your firewall administrators (both local and in Ireland) as well as your ISP. Since a Windows box can ping the printer, either the administrator has made a special rule for that PC, or your network routing is wrong. The traceroute is probably telling you this already. There's no use in trying to make the spooler work until networking is functional. Tell your network admin that you need ping allowed to work and port 515 (remote spooling) to work from your box to the remote printer.

[Dan Maul]

Thanks all for the help you have offered. I will get with the network guys to help me solve this.

Thanks again!!

[Dave Chamberlin]

Hi,

I have had to configure a number of multifunction printers/copiers (canon, ricoh, savin)to work with Oracle on our N4000 (HPUX 11.0). We had a number of problems when setting them up as remote printers. The issue for the Canon and Ricoh printers is that it must be set up in jetadmin as a remote BSD printer (named print). Without the BSD option they would not work. When using Jetadmin software to set up the savin units, the printer is NOT pingable in jetadmin - even though it can be pinged from the OS. I configure it anyway - and tell jetadmin that its an HP4. This works fine. I dont know that this is any use to you but it may give you some ideas...

[Dan Maul]

This problem has been resolved. The default route table had not been setup correctly. Once I correctly inputed the route using /etc/rc.config.d/netconfig I was able to ping and print to it. So this has a happy ending.

Thank you all for the help!!