[comp.sys.dec] Summary of "VMS lpd

pcl@robots.ox.ac.uk (Paul Leyland) (05/17/91)

A little while ago, I posted a request for information about a
Unix-compatible line printer daemon to run under VAX/VMS.  Now that
the response rate has fallen, here's the promised summary.

First off, let me thank the following people for their assistance:

	bernards@ECN.NL				Marcel Bernards
	meadows@cslvax.weeg.uiowa.edu		Howard Meadows
	allen@ecf.ncsl.nist.gov.		Dan Allen
	cczanj@vax.ccc.nottingham.ac.uk		Andy Jack
	lilianstrom@krang.fnal.gov		Al Lilianstrom
	mvrf6@tnofel.fel.tno.nl			Martin van Roon
	jansen%decnet.madraf@vms3.macc.wisc.edu	Stephan Jansen
	barkelew@ccwf.cc.utexas.edu		David Barkelew
	xxseub@osprey.lerc.nasa.gov		Steven Eubanks
	hughes@bronze.ucs.indiana.edu		Larry Hughes
	wong_a@summer.chem.su.oz.au		Adrian Wong
	smith@mcclb0.med.nyu.edu		Ross Smith
	cliffb%isavax@uunet.uu.net		Cliff Bedore

(Some of the above are "metoos", but thanks anyway.)

Most everyone recommended CMU-TEK.  For example:

> You could buy CMU-TEK 6.3 (or higher ?) from the Carnegy-Mellon
> University for a few hundred bucks We have that stuff here on almost
> all our VMS systems.  LPR LPD TELNET FTP SMTP and some more stuff is
> implemented very well.
 
> Lotta cheaper than UCX or Multinet.

and ...

> You can order CMU-TEK 6.5 for $200 on TK50 at:
 
> Karen Heilman
> Carnegie-Mellon University
> 4910 Forbes Avenue, UCC 124
> Pittsburg, PA 15213, USA


Matthew Madison made the following offer ...

> I have taken the CMU-Tek LPR/LPD software (from V6.4 with some mods) and
> ported it to UCX.  If you've got CMU-Tek already, I can share it with you.


However, Dan Allen said:

> 	I have a version of LPD/LPR originally developed for VMS and
> The Wollongong Group's WIN/TCP software.  A number of people have
> expressed an interest in using it with UCX and a port of the client
> (VMS print symbiont) was done by a gentleman in Germany.  The server
> code is being converted by a gentleman in Atlanta at this time.  The
> last report I had was that it was working and he was in the process
> of final testing.  I'm maintaining a list of people who are using this
> software and will announce new versions as they become available.
> 
> 	The source (VAX C) for TWG and the UCX symbiont are available
> via anonymous ftp from this site (ECF.NCSL.NIST.GOV = 129.6.48.2).  It
> is stored as a VMS saveset (BSDPRINT.BCK).


The other commercial offering mentioned was Multinet.  For example:

> Buy Multinet from TGV instead of UCX as Multinet's LPD server allows exactly 
> what you want.  Works real nice.  I have it running on a number of machines.

and ...

> P.S. IMHO Multinet from TGV beats the pants off UCX at this juncture and
>      is a heck of a lot cheaper. It provides all of the usual Internet
>      services including BOTH CLIENT AND SERVER NFS!  Great support and
>      nice people to work with to boot.  They also have a discount for
>      educational institutions.

and ...

> 	Switch to MultiNet, it has solved our Unix->VMS printing
> problems and appears to be quite a robust implementation of TCP/IP
> for VMS (much better than CMU). Some surprising net software runs
> under MultiNet (rusers, finger, rsh etc.). At the moment I'm reading
> the news using ANUNews (for VMS), which is using the NNTP service 
> over MultiNet to query a Unix news server. Nice!


Once again, thanks folks.

Paul Leyland