OpenVMS Telnet Printing

[Rohit Kalicharran]

I use a Powerhouse Application on OpenVMS and normally prints to the serial ports of my EpsonDFX8500 printers that are connected to DEC Terminal Servers.
I have now installed ethernet print servers in the printers and am now experiencing some printing problems.

Whenever I print on preprinted forms, two lines would skip over to the next page. This would accumulate, ie, two lines would skip to the second page, four to the third and so on.

When I print normal reports, I don't have this problem.

Please note that everything was fine when i was using the DEC Terminal Servers and the Printer's serial port. Also, I was using a Latsym symbiont for the print queue in OpenVMS.

The difference from when everything was fine to now are:
1. The interface on the printer was changed from serial to ethernet
2. the printer was connected to a DEC Terminal Server and is now connected to a Network switch.
3. The print queue was changed from LATSYM to TCPIP$TELNETSYM.
4. From 3 above, i presume the communication protocol was changed from LAT to TCP/IP.

If I change bach to the old settings, everything works fine but I have some remote offices that only use TCPIP to connect to the main office so the LAT prionting is not and option there.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Hoff]

Items 1 through 4 are al facets of the same change; a move from LAT to IP telnet, and from one particular terminal server to another.

I'd almost guess that there was an old set of print forms for printing (forms are associated with the print queue) that were not carried over to the new queue. If the old queues are still around, check the settings.

Check the LP Lines setting (the sys$lp_lines logical name), the form length setting associated with the print queue (SHOW QUEU/FORM/FULL queuename, etc), the terminal server length setting (there's usually one of these), and dig around. Also check the setting around formfeeds; there are various ways to process a formfeed found in the data.

See if the pre-printed forms are really shorter, too.

There may well be a knob inside Cognos Powerhouse, too.

Also determine exactly what the application is sending; what characters are in the data stream. Linefeeds, formfeeds, carriage returns, etc. Check the data in the print stream.

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs LLC

[Rohit Kalicharran]

Thanks to Hoff for the reply.

The forms for the two print queues are both set to default, so I don't think that's the problem.

I'm not sure how to check the data in the print stream.

Here are the settings for the two queues:

$ show que sys$prin* /full
Terminal queue SYS$PRINT, idle, on NISAXP::SYS_PRT, mounted form DEFAULT
< GENICOM Printer In Computer Room at BRICKDAM >
/AUTOSTART_ON=(NISAXP::SYS_PRT) /BASE_PRIORITY=4 /DEFAULT=(FORM=DEFAULT)
Lowercase /OWNER=[SYSTEM] /PROCESSOR=LATSYM
/PROTECTION=(S:RSMD,O:RS,G:RS,W:RS) /SCHEDULE=(NOSIZE)

Printer queue SYS$PRINT2, idle, on NISAXP::"PRTGLODPO01:9100",
mounted form DEFAULT
/AUTOSTART_ON=(NISAXP::"PRTGLODPO01:9100") /BASE_PRIORITY=4 /DEFAULT=(FEED,
FORM=DEFAULT) Lowercase /OWNER=[SYSTEM] /PROCESSOR=TCPIP$TELNETSYM
/PROTECTION=(S:M,O:D,G:R,W:S)

[Rohit Kalicharran]

Also, the forms are the same length: 11 inches.

The forms actually contains 3 vouchers(cheques). Everything is fine with with the first two vouchers. The Problem starts with the third one (last voucher on the page.

[Bill Hall]

The HP TCP/IP Services for OpenVMS Management manual contains a section on troubleshooting telnet symbiont printing problems by using the logical name TCPIP$TELNETSYM_DEBUG to force a log file of the character stream that is being sent to the printer. I suspect you may have to use some combination of the logicals TCPIP$TELNETSYM_RAW_TCP and TCPIP$TELNETSYM_SUPPRESS_FORMFEEDS to modify the print stream.

I you reviewed the printer's new network interface for the existence of any appropriate switches or knobs that might be causing the network interface itself to add the extra lines?

Bill

[Hoff]

The forms are either different lengths, or the forms themselves have nothing to do with the underlying issue.

In addition to the previous reply around monitoring the data stream, you could also stop the queues, then merge the contents of the queues to a queue of your own, and use the Freeware EXECSMB or such to see what's in the files.

On no evidence, I might well suspect Cognos is helping here, as that looks to be one of the biggest differences.

Cognos support database does have some discussions of printing, and how you control same. Not that I can get into the Cognos database.

Another option is to -- since you're using the same form for both -- create a second form that's shorter. See if that works.

Stephen Hoffman
HoffmanLabs LLC

[Jon Pinkley]

If these are being printed with /form=default, can you please show us the output of

$ show queue/form/full default

Also the output of

$ show term/full

for the LTA device the working LATSYM queue is using.

Is there some long line (most likely with many blanks) at the end of the second voucher? Or, does Cognos put characters directly in the output file? Given your description, the only thing I can think of that could explain is something that the LTDRIVER is doing "behind the scenes".

My guess: LTA device is set /nowrap and the DEFAULT form is set to /wrap/notruncate

If the LTA device set to /nowrap it will truncate records longer than the /width, and therefore suppress adding linefeeds.

My suggestion: use /nowrap/truncate and set the width correctly on the form that the vouchers are printed with.

Jon

[Jon Pinkley]

Rohit,

I just noticed that your LATSYM queue was setup with /default=(feed,form=default) and your TCPIP$TELNETSYM queue is setup with /default=(form=default). Why was the feed needed on the LATSYM queue but not the TCPIP$TELNETSYM queue?

Jon

[Rohit Kalicharran]

First, Thanks for all the replies.

Can any one tell me how to change the parameters for the forms used in the queues. Here are the settings for the forms and the lat device:
=========================================
$ show queue/form/full default
Form name Number Description
--------- ------ -----------
DEFAULT 0 System-defined default
/LENGTH=66 /MARGIN=(BOTTOM=6) /STOCK=DEFAULT /TRUNCATE /WIDTH=132


==================================
$ show term/full sys_prt
Terminal: _LTA100: Device_Type: LA210 Owner: SYMBIONT_3
Username: SYSTEM

Input: 38400 LFfill: 0 Width: 132 Parity: None
Output: 38400 CRfill: 0 Page: 66

Terminal Characteristics:
Interactive Echo Type_ahead No Escape
No Hostsync TTsync Lowercase Tab
Wrap Hardcopy No Remote Eightbit
Broadcast No Readsync Form Fulldup
No Modem No Local_echo No Autobaud Hangup
No Brdcstmbx No DMA No Altypeahd Set_speed
No Commsync No Line Editing Overstrike editing No Fallback
No Dialup No Secure server No Disconnect No Pasthru
No Syspassword SIXEL Graphics No Soft Characters No Printer Port
Numeric Keypad No ANSI_CRT No Regis No Block_mode
No Advanced_video No Edit_mode No DEC_CRT No DEC_CRT2
No DEC_CRT3 No DEC_CRT4 No DEC_CRT5 No Ansi_Color
VMS Style Input

Device spooled to _DKC0:
$
==================================

I noticed in the Default form, there is a bottom margin of 6 lines. I wonder if i change this, what will happen to the prints.

As for the setting "/default=(feed,form=default)", I just created the TCP queue with the default settings, The Latsym queue i did not create myself.

Also, I don't have any problem with the width since everything is being printed, just not where i want it.

[RBrown_1]

Use the DEFINE/FORM command to modify or create a form. HELP DEFINE/FORM will probably tell you everything you need to know.

In your case:

$ show queue/form/full default
Form name Number Description
--------- ------ -----------
DEFAULT 0 System-defined default
/LENGTH=66 /MARGIN=(BOTTOM=6) /STOCK=DEFAULT /TRUNCATE /WIDTH=132

$ DEFINE/FORM DEFAULT 0/LENGTH=66 /MARGIN=(BOTTOM=4) /STOCK=DEFAULT /TRUNCATE /WIDTH=132

(unwrap line and insert continuation characters are required.)

Mind you I don't know if you are allowed to change the default form. If that turns out to the case, you can just pick a new form name and number in the above command.

[Jon Pinkley]

Rohit,

Go back to Bill Hall's suggestion. Something is making the TELNETSYM behave differently than the LATSYM. It isn't because the LTA device is preventing line wraps (since your LTA device is set /wrap, if anything we would expect extra lines in the output of the LATSYM queue).

You have told us that everything but the queue is the same, i.e. the forms are the same. If that is true, and the same form works differently on the LATSYM queue than the TELNETSYM queue, something is modifying the data streams differently in the LAT case vs. the TCP case.

Can you provide output of

$ show logical /system *telnetsym*

Here are the setting we use for the telnetsym stream modifiers (in our sys$manager:sylogicals.com)

$ define/system/executive/nolog tcpip$telnetsym_raw_tcp 1
$ define/system/executive/nolog tcpip$telnetsym_suppress_formfeeds 34

I recommend keeping both queues active so you can send the same job to both queues and verify that the results are the same.

I will also state that we use Epson DFX-5000 printers, and we abandoned using the epson "ethernet" card that went into the slot because we couldn't get it to work correctly. We gave up rather quickly, since we could get the DFX-5000 to work correctly using external ethernet-parallel print servers (we used hp JetDirect 300X J3263A external units we bought off ebay). These were used when we moved printers off async serial ports on Cisco 2511 routers, and the only change from the VMS point of view was chaning the ip_address:tcpip_port associated with the print queue.

Jon

[Phil.Howell]

I think that latsym drops any %X00 in the print stream while telnetsym does not.
You should set the telnetsym debug flags to record the print stream, and compare it to that sent down the serial line (you do have a WG DT10 don't you?)
Phil

[Anton van Ruitenbeek]

Rohit,

Is the hardware the same ?
I didn't catch or the printer is still the same. It looks like the printer pagelength itself (on the printer) is changed in two lines less.
If the printer is physicly the same, maybe it has multiple settings, one for network and one for Serial.
The behavior looks like this because the consiquently FF after two lines, next page 4 lines short etc.

AvR

[Kumar_Sanjay]

Rohit,

Apart from these all settings, I woild like to suggest you something about Printer Hardware side. Please read the manual carefully. I believe there must be some dip swithes/config menu will be in inside the printer to adjust.

Thanks and Regards
Sanjay Kumar.