printing to KM Bizhub 421 SCO/filepro

[Brian K. White]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: scooter6 at gmail.com 
To: Brian K. White 
Cc: filepro-list at lists.celestial.com 
Sent: Thursday, February 26, 2009 4:07 PM
Subject: Re: printing to KM Bizhub 421 SCO/filepro


  Well, perhaps 1/2 the battle is taken care of.....

  after running the script Jose pointed to.....from the command line I can print
  cat text.txt | netcat -hbizhub -p9100

--------

Any article that said to use cat that way automatically suggests...
In any event, this shows that the print server has a jetdirect mode tat works, at least well enough to print one small text file one time. Whether it can handle a ponding influx of lots of jobs via this protocol without dropping or corrupting some jobs, or locking up entirely is yet to be determined, but generally the big non-cheap printers built-in print servers do handle jetdirect mode well. Cheap ones do not.



  and the test text file I created printed fine without issue....yea!!!
  So, for the first time I have printed to these monster printers from the SCO box.

  Now, I just need to know how to get filepro to use this to print.

  Brian - thanks for your reply.

  Are you saying I should install the 2 links that you provided, leave the lp -dbizhub -s
  command the way it is in filePro and everything should be fine?
  I'm hoping it's that easy.......

  Anxious to get the other 1/2 of this issue resolved so my client can get rid of their other
  junk printers and just use these 2 big bizhubs for all their printing.

  BTW - I did not create an /etc/printers file.....is that part necessary for filePro to see it?

--------

/etc/printers is created by the first of the 2 links I posted.
It is only used by the printer interface script which that tar file provides.
You run the curl commands shown there, you read the directions from the web page and from the comments in /etc/printers to create a new printer and have the Net script print to it.
The comment on the web page about the chmod command is necessary. I keep meaning to alter the script not to need that any more but it's a harmless change so it's ok to tell people to do it.

I'm not saying to do that, I'm saying that's the only way I've done network printers for over 10 years and it's been a breeze the whole time. But, I'm familiar with osr5's print spooler system, so this being a slight deviation from the normal official methods is no big deal to me. The benefits make it worth it hands down.

But, if your printer understands lpd which MOST do, and if you don't care about using an interface script (which for filepro data you don't generally need or want any interface script to alter the data from filepro so this is just _fine_) then you can probably get away with using the built-in lpd printer support right in scoadmin. No need for the stuff I linked to, and you end up using a normal lp command in filepro and everywhere else.

I think you should understand the stock system first before trying to get fancy with deviations from it. I would not suggest trying to avoid the learning curve. It's better, for everyone, to know whats going on with the tools you rely on. You could drop that netcat command above right into filepros printer config in place of an lp command. It'll work basically fine. It'll only work from filepro, and you'll be relying on the printer iteself to do a good job of spooling up jobs that come in faster than it can print them, which, likely it will do OK. It's just that, to me that's a "good enough" solution, not a "good" solution, in my perhaps over fussy opinion.

And you'll have to use that command instead of lp in any external utilities like say backupedge. I would hate that. The first time the ip changes you'll have to remember all the places it was hard coded. When this printer gets replaced with some other model that needs lpd instead of netcat you'll have to go change things in several places, whereas with the Net wrapper script, all you ever have to change after that is one line in /etc/printers.

Like I said, what you want is to google up a few things and just learn them:
1) "How do I configure printers in OSR 5.0.7?"
followed by, after you have that process down and understood for normal printers, including how printer interface scripts work,
2) "How do I print to a print server via LPD from OSR 5.0.7?"
and after you understand that,
3) "How do I create a netcat printer interface script on OSR 5.0.7?"

Think of it as knowing how to fix a flat tire and check the oil yourself instead of just driving the car.

You can probably just say "SCO" in place of "OSR 5.0.7" when googling this questions because the process has hardly changed at all since Xenix days an a lot of the best articles and newsgroup posts have been written ages ago and not too many recently. Though, 1 and 2 above are perfectly well described in manual pages available on-line from the sco web site and do specifically refer to 5.0.7.

I guess it seems perverse that I can write all this and yet claim to be to busy to just write up the things I just said to google up. Sorry! ;)
All I can say is, that's all I ever did in the first place, that and experiment a little.
Many awsome people helped me, but it was just by having long ago written articles which I googled up and read.

Have fun!
-- 
Brian K. White      brian at aljex.com       http://profile.to/KEYofR
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