Zebra label printer compatibility with 11i

[Matt Hearn]

Greetings! We have recently migrated our LIMS application to new L3000 servers running 11i, from a number of old D and K class servers running 10.20.

We are, unfortunately, running into label printer problems. The old servers used OpenSpool to connect to the remote label printers. Now we have the printers attached to NT print servers, and we install them on the HP box as regular old LP-spooled remote printers.

In almost every case, the customer cannot use her Oracle Reports software to generate labels to the printers because the fonts are horribly screwed up (printing out at 1/4 the size, completely misaligned, spread out over a number of pages, etc.) She CAN, however, print normally from some Citrix servers that are used to access the LIMS application.

The printers are Zebra LP2042s, which only seem to understand the old Eltron proprietary EPL code. We may be replacing them with LP2844s soon as the old printers are starting to break down, but it doesn't appear that the LP2844s are PCL compatible either!

It looks like I'm going to end up writing new interface scripts for the printers, but that's a huge hassle I'd rather not have to do; the printer I can use to test is in Canada, and I'm in Delaware, so basically I can make a change to the interface script, and then print a test page, and then I have to call a guy up in Varennes to have him check and see what happened. Very time consuming.

Has anyone run into an issue like this? More to the point, has anyone else managed to MAKE IT WORK?

Thank you very much!!!

[Mark Greene_1]

Do you have the correct printer driver on the NT boxes?

See here:

http://www.zebra.com/SD/drivers_V3xx.htm

mark

[Matt Hearn]

The NT guy assures me we do. If we didn't, I don't think we'd be able to print from the Citrix application boxes.

I did search the Zebra support site for anything relating to hp-ux and got bupkus, so I'm not entirely sure that ANY Zebra printer is going to fill our needs here! Argh. Seriously, how hard would it be for them to install a PCL module in there? It'd certainly make MY life easier.

[Jeff Schussele]

Hi Matt,

Since it's defined as a remote printer on the HP system there's not much that the rlp daemon can do with print jobs.
It's up to either A) the application to imbed codes or B) the NT print driver to format the job.
Now, if the zebra printers were on Jet-Direct print servers you'd have a lot more control over the jobs by customizing the printer I/F scripts.

Rgds,
Jeff

[Matt Hearn]

Ooh! I forgot to mention that. I believe the remote printers ARE attached via jet-direct (although unfortunately I couldn't tell you exactly how; I didn't set them up, and I have very little experience with printers, JetDirect, OpenSpool, etc.).

I have been fiddling a LITTLE with the interface script, but I'm not getting very far. At the moment, I have a small section in the script that runs each print request through "strings" to try and remove all the embedded PCL codes, but it's not helping much. It does remove them, but I still print at a funny font. I wonder if I can just stick some EPL codes on the front of each print job to define a font or something.

[Bill Hassell]

Your OpenSpool system probably had some text conversion code imbedded in the interface scripts. Bascially, HP-UX prints nothing but ASCII. There is an interface script that will take plain ASCII and convert it to simple Postscript, but other than that, the interface scripts just send the data to print directly to the printer.

The EPL code is likely a series of escape sequences, much like PCL and needs to be transmitted to the remote printers untouched. PCL is nothing but plain old ASCII with escape sequences for special things like fonts. HP-UX knows nothing about fonts and graphics and the interface script used for remote printing does not touch the data. To troubleshoot this problem, you'll need the EPL reference manual, disable the Zebra printer on the HP-UX side so a print job from Oracle will be captured in the spooling area (/var/spool/lp/request) and then look at the "d" file. This is exactly what will be sent to the printer. See if the data is correct for printing (it probably is). Now try printing this "d" file using the -oraw option:

lp -dzebra-remote -oBSDl -oBSDh dA0011yoda

The -oBSDl option will trigger the BSD -l option in the rmodel script and should tell the NT server to print the data as-is and not toss in page breaks. You can also use the option -oBSDh drops any banner page. If this works OK, you can either change the model script for each Zebra printer (it will be a copy of rmodel located in /usr/lib/lp/model) to default the -l and -h options, or change the Oracle print command to include the 2 BSD options.

[Jeff Schussele]

Well if they're directly attached to Windoze systems then I don't think they can be Jet-Direct print servers per se.
I may be wrong there as we don't have anything attached this way. We have HP LaserJets with their Jet-Direct I/Fs or Jet-Direct print server box connected non-HP printers.
I guess I would start by checking the NT systems to see if they're running any HP print server SW & If so get the Jet-Direct SW installed on the HP systems & see if it will talk to the server/printer properly.
I don't *think* the HP Jet-Direct SW has a defined Zebra model type so you'd then have to choose a "dumb" printer I/F & edit the script to have it output the proper codes which means you'll need the Zebra manual to find out just what they'd be.

Good Luck,
Jeff

[Mark Greene_1]

"Ooh! I forgot to mention that. I believe the remote printers ARE attached via jet-direct (although unfortunately I couldn't tell you exactly how; I didn't set them up,"

If they are on JetDirect interfaces, they should have IP addresses and you ought to be able to telnet to them. If that's the case, make sure the default LPD print queue name is "auto". You can also specify the IP address of a unix box the printer can use as a syslog server. The messages it produces might help shed some light on where the problem is.

mark

[Matt Hearn]

They do indeed have IPs, because the previous OpenSpool setup went straight to the hostname of the printer instead of a print queue on a printer server.

I should point out that I'm kinda dumb: how do I set the default LPD print queue name? And how will that redirect to my various printers? (We have roughly 40 printers attached to the servers in question.)

[Bill Hassell]

You wrote:

> They do indeed have IPs, because the previous OpenSpool setup went straight to the hostname of the printer instead of a print queue on a printer server.

This is likely a non-HP LAN interface, thus the printers are acting as if they are BSD print servers. You add them using SAM a remote printers (not network printers which must be HP JetDirect LAN interfaces)

> I should point out that I'm kinda dumb: how do I set the default LPD print queue name?

On a multi-user server, you *NEVER* want to set a default printer because it will always be the wrong one for some user someplace. HOWEVER, for a particular user login or an application that lacks the ability to specify the -d option in lp, export the variable LPDEST (e.g., export LPDEST=zebra23)

> And how will that redirect to my various printers? (We have roughly 40 printers attached to the servers in question.)

Not possible to sort out. If the application (Oracle Reports) cannot be told to use a specific printer, then use LPDEST. Keep in mind that this is an enviroment value so once Oracle Reports has started, LPDEST is the only printer that copy of the program will use. Stop the report program, change LPDEST and restart to use a different printer.

[Mark Greene_1]

"I should point out that I'm kinda dumb: how do I set the default LPD print queue name? And how will that redirect to my various printers? (We have roughly 40 printers attached to the servers in question.) "

Apologies for not being more precise. Telnet to the IP address of any of the printers. If the Jet Direct firmware is anywhere near being recent, you should get a menu with the option to enter ? for help or / to see the current settings. Enter / and see what the default queue on that Jet Direct interface is set to. Enter defaultq AUTO to change it. Enter save to save the change, then enter exit to exit the telnet session. Repeat for every printer. Do NOT designate a default queue on your HP system (unless you already have one).

I hope this is more helpful,
mark

[John Jimenez]

I do not know if this will help or not, but
I have upgraded 2 systems from 10.20 to 11i and in both cases I had a couple of printers that would not format correctly. Before the conversion I ftp over the printer files from 10.20:
/var/spool/lp/interface
/var/spool/lp/interface/model.orig
I played around are replaced 1 or both of these files on 11i and the printer worked just like they used to.