filePro Printing from SCO Openserver 6 directly to an SMB share

[Brian K. White]

They want to work at home and print to printers in the office? But not 
to proper network printers, but to printers shared from desktops?

I would not do it that way. Keeping windows shared printers configured 
and working is a maintenance tar pit. They are always changing and 
breaking. I would put the printers on the network via print servers, and 
have both the desktops and the server print to the printers via the 
print servers. Then when the desktop is turned off or changed out or 
messed up, the printer keeps working. It also means you don't need to 
install facetwin on the server.

However, you do have a few options to do it if you must:

FacetWin can do that easily. I don't know if the unlicenced demo version 
can act as a smb print client for free. It might! I think you only have 
to pay for the terminal emulator sessions.

I don't know about OSR6, but I know OSR5 has an incomplete and also now 
very old version of Samba available. It's incomplete in that you can't 
use it to mount a windows share on unix, but it does alow windows 
clients to mount shares from unix, and it does have commandline smb 
clients that let you access file and print shares in a scriptable 
ftp-like interface. You could make a printer interface script that used 
the samba client util to send print jobs to windows shared printers.

OSR6 might possibly have a newer better version of samba given how 
osr6's kernel is more modern and supports more linux-like features, and 
generally supports more gnu/linux software, and supports it more fully.

But really, if I HAD to print to windows desktop shared printers, AT 
LEAST I would do it by installing the windows lpd support ("print 
services for unix"), and printing to the printers via lpr instead of via 
smb. It's a built-in feature of windows. You just go into add-remove 
programs and "install" it, which is really just turning it on, because 
it's actually already there. No one needs any install disks or downloads 
usually.

-- 
bkw

On 3/31/2017 3:40 PM, Mike Schwartz via Filepro-list wrote:
>     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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