Remote Printer Setup Problem

[Frank Thyssen]

I have an application running on HP-UX which can generate 150 reports in a minute to a single printer using the lp command. (1000 user environment)

Now the reports have to be re-processed using a Windows program called Jetforms to improve the layout and then print, email or fax the them.

To get the reports to the Windows 2000 system, the printer on the HP-UX system is configured as a remote printer. The Windows services accept the reports and saves them to a files where the Jetforms software can find them for processing.

This all works.

The problem I have is with the remote printer configured on the HP-UX system (both 11.11 & 11.23).
When the HP-UX spooling system sends the report to the Windows system, it uses a program called: /usr/sbin/rlp

The program /usr/sbin/rlp will connect from unixhost port 1023 to windowshost port 515. Send a single report from the unix spool queue and then close down the TCP/IP connection.
Then it will immediately establish another connection from unixhost port 1023 to windowshost port 515 to send the next report.

I know there is some RFC that says if the source and destination IP addresses are not changing, and the source and destination ports are not changing then a time out must be observed before the connection can be established again.

I am seeing this time out delay with the first transmission from the unix system to the windows system happening very quickly, and each subsequent transmission taking 2 seconds longer than the first.

This time out delay means that I can only transfer about 30 reports per minute to the windows system, so I can get into trouble very quickly.

If a second remote printer is configured on the unix host, then is will see that the first printer is already using source port 1023, so it will repeatedly use source port 1022. Therefore the second printer is also limited to about 30 reports per minute.

Does anyone know how to configure /usr/sbin/rlp so that it uses a different source port number for each subsequent connection?

[OldSchool]

Can JetForms be configured to simply pick the files out of a location (I looked at Adobe's site, but didn't see that option)?

if so, mounting a directory and dumping the files directly might be an option.

As to the question you posed, I got nothin'.

Sorry.

[Tim Nelson]

My only thoughts are the same as Oldschool's.

Get the files to the Jetforms directory in someother fashion other than rlp.

Or ask the Jetforms people for some better ideas. If they are an "A number 1" company they should have some ideas ?

Best of luck.


or.. a long shot.. find the open source for an rlp client and rewrite the code ?

[OldSchool]

for what it's worth....

Jetforms appears to have been purchased by Adobe (in 2002), and the product appears to have been updated to Central Pro or Central Output.

There is something about the "jfmerge" in the docs. From what I saw, the print is sent to a file, then post-processed and output. You might try simply ftp'ing an ascii file to the source dir used by jfmerge and see what happens.