remote print spools

[Mark Bak]

I have HP printers attached locally to NT Servers and have set up
remote print queues on Unix to point to these NT queues. The limitation
we're facing is that we can only print normal-sized font, portrait, etc. In
other words, all Unix/lp print options are ignored.

It's easy to see by comparing print queue files in /etc/lp/interface why
this is the case - it simply doesn't allow for "-o" options to lp (or
ignores them, more accurately, because it uses rlp w/ a limited and
different set of print options). What I'd like to do is be able to do
"lp -d -oc -olandscape" to print compressed, landscape, to a
remote NT print queue.
Is there any way around this?

[Rita C Workman]

Hmmmm.....if these printers are HP network printers, with IP's..have you tried using JetAdmin to set them up on the UNIX box and print straight to them (instead of setting them up as remote printers...). By using JetAdmin it would then have the print drivers for those printers, and should then have no problem printing.

Just a thought,
Rita

.....

[Stefan Schulz]

The normal lp daemon on NT is really limited. You don't have any -o options.

If these printers are not networked or for some reason you can't use this option Rita mentioned then you need some more software.

There are several third party products out there but i can't remember the names. Also there are some "Services for Unix" or something which is available from Microsoft. Think i read something about a murch better lp daemon included in this product.

Hope this helps. Stefan

[Printaporn_1]

Hi Ron,

remote printer use rmodel , when we look at /usr/spool/lp/model/rmodel

there have explanation about some limited option supported , some enhance -o option will not recognize.

[Andrew Maslin]

As someone else mentioned, the default NT lpd service is pretty limited. We've used Chameleon by Netmanage with some success, and I'm sure there are other packages as well.

Another way to adjust font size, etc. is to pass printer init strings in your print jobs, but that may depend on how you print, the applications you may be printing from, etc. Our DB has init fields built in to all printouts, so we're able to use smaller fonts, etc.