filePro Printing from SCO Openserver 6 directly to an SMB share

[Mike Schwartz]

    One of my filepro customers asked me if they could spool their filePro
reports, forms and spreadsheets directly to SMB shares on their local
network from their SCO Openserver 6 box.   They want to do this because
their staff wants to work remotely from home more days each week and they
want to make the remote experience as seamless as possible.

 

     They are running filepro 5.7.03.03D4.  They are also running Facetwin
terminal emulator on their Windows workstations (mostly Win 7 yet, some Win
10).

 

    Their Windows techs gave me a sample SMB path to the Windows Server 2012
box that runs the RDP sessions for their home (remote) users:
\\internal.xyzcorp.com\Users\Mike\Reports

 

     If there is an issue using the FQDN, the static IP for
internal.xyzcorp.com Windows Server 2012 is 172.16.104.20 

 

     They also gave me a user name and password for Mike's share. 

 

     Currently each user can choose to spool reports to their user
subdirectory (IE; /usr/Mike/Reports) on their SCO server.   The reports end
up with unique names like "statement-JonesCorp-98765" where the 98765 is the
"$$" process ID.

 

     When the users want to pull all their forms over to their Windows
Desktop to review and print them, they have an icon on their desktop that
uses a little FTP script that I wrote to pull only the new report names
(those reports not already in a folder on their desktop) off of the Unix
server and onto their RDP desktops.  

 

     This system works OK and the users are happy with it.  However, the 3rd
party guys who maintain their Windows network keep badgering me about why
the users have to FTP the reports to their desktops.  

 

     This FTP thing was a work-around I came up with several years ago to
enable their staff to work from their homes.  The users connect to the main
office via a Fortinet VPN, then log into an RDP session of Windows 7.  From
there, the FTP script I wrote works just fine to connect to to their SCO
server at 172.16.104.18 and pull their files over to their RDP workstation
session.  I converted some of the most used reports to PDF's to eliminate
viewing and printing problems with the different printers each staff person
has at home.

 

     The Windows guys refuse to open a port on their firewall so I can do
Facetwin Remote printing.  (Even the SP encrypted version of Facetwin isn't
secure enough for them.)  Also, occasionally when printing Facetwin reports
and the user wants to cancel a report, the print spooler was getting jammed
up.

 

     I'm hesitant to open Samba shares on the server because of all the
recent ransomware attacks.  I've always told them that their SCO Unix
machine is pretty well protected against ransomware attacks.  I know
Facetwin is also capable of making SMB shares.  Both Facetwin SMB and Samba
are disabled right now...

 

    Can I even do what they are asking?  Can I just make an entry on the
/etc.hosts file and in the SCO print spooler system and 'print" things to an
external network share?  

 

     Bob Rasmussen:  If you  think you have an Anzio solution, I would be
interested in that.  I could probably talk them into buying Anzio licenses;
at least for their remote users.

 

Thanks!

 

Mike Schwartz

 

     

    

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