david@linc.cis.upenn.edu (David Feldman) (06/18/88)
I am currently trying to get lpd to spool through an annex UX port. Or, I am at least thinking about it. The target device is a laserwriter (SUN) running postscript. Supposedly, using Transcript 2.1 (which we have) and the diffs to lpd supplied in the Annex UX 3.0 distribution this should be possible. Has anyone done this? The big problem is that the laserwriter talks to the Transcript printer filter quite a bit. We have enough trouble getting a laserwriter to stay up over a serial line, although things are supposed to be better under Transcript 2.1 . The source OSs in question are Ultrix 2.0 on Vaxen, and IBM BSD 4.3 on RTs. Does anybody have any better ideas about how to do this? One way is to create a connection deamon that opens a port on an annex and feeds it to a pty. I don't know if this is better, but it is straightforward, has a tty-like interface that will work with lpd as-is, and has been done here at Penn many times. If this is what I end up doing I will try to get an ftp port service number assigned (we did this for a daemon that interfaces a remote host and a local pty which speak different graphics languages - the number is 149 - well, actually, Al Broscius did it). Thanx for the help, in advance. Dave Feldman david@linc.cis.upenn.edu
jsloan@wright.EDU (John Sloan) (06/19/88)
in article <5114@super.upenn.edu>, david@linc.cis.upenn.edu (David Feldman) says: > I am currently trying to get lpd to spool through an annex UX port. Or, > I am at least thinking about it. The target device is a laserwriter > (SUN) running postscript. : If you ever figure out how to do this reliably you should do the net a favor and announce it. In our version of Transcript (admittedly not the latest one), the filter pscomm talks directly to the device /dev/lw (or whatever you have it configured for), which makes it difficult (I'm not enough of a Unix expert to claim impossible) to fork and exec pscomm from another lpd filter that speaks TCP/IP to the Annex. The network filter to talk to the Annex is not difficult to write, given the C code that comes with the Annex as an example. Is there an undocumented switch for pscomm that makes it behave differently? Everytime you see someone on the net who says something to the effect "We have our Laserwriter hooked up to a serial port on a XYZ ethernet terminal server, but sometimes something doesn't print and we don't know why" you know that they've got a unidirectional connection and they're throwing away all the error messages generated by the printer that would normally have been logged by pscomm. -- John Sloan, The SPOTS Group Wright State University Research Building CSNET: jsloan@SPOTS.Wright.Edu 3171 Research Blvd., Kettering, OH 45420 UUCP: ...!wright!jsloan +1-513-259-1384 +1-513-873-2491 Logical Disclaimer: belong(opinions,jsloan). belong(opinions,_):-!,fail.
medin@cincsac.arc.nasa.gov (Milo S. Medin) (06/22/88)
Don't worry about pscomm. R4.0 has a feature where you can run a reverse telnet daemon that creates a file that pscomm can open and read and write, etc... The daemon then does a TCP connect to the annex port of your choosing. A really nice idea. Fixed in 4.0! Milo
jsloan@wright.EDU (John Sloan) (06/22/88)
in article <10657@ames.arc.nasa.gov>, medin@cincsac.arc.nasa.gov (Milo S. Medin) says: > Don't worry about pscomm. R4.0 has a feature where you can run a > reverse telnet daemon that creates a file that pscomm can open and read > and write, etc... The daemon then does a TCP connect to the annex > port of your choosing. A really nice idea. > > Fixed in 4.0! > > Milo R4.0 of what? SunOS? Annex software from Encore? Transcript? I embarressed to admit that shortly after I made my prior posting about not being able to spool to a LaserWriter via an Annex serial port, it occurred to me how in fact it might be done using a pty/tty pair. Dumb dumb dumb. I'm debugging now. If/when it works as well as I think it should, I'll ship the filter off to Rich Salz for comp.unix.sources, unless is obsolesced by something else sooner. -- John Sloan, The SPOTS Group Wright State University Research Building CSNET: jsloan@SPOTS.Wright.Edu 3171 Research Blvd., Kettering, OH 45420 UUCP: ...!wright!jsloan +1-513-259-1384 +1-513-873-2491 Logical Disclaimer: belong(opinions,jsloan). belong(opinions,_):-!,fail.
medin@cincsac.arc.nasa.gov (Milo S. Medin) (06/23/88)
R4.0 of the Annex software. It's in beta test now, and hopefully will be out soon. You get the source for a program called rtelnet on the tape. Works great. Kudo's to Encore for 'doing the right thing'. I only wish all our vendors did... Thanks, Milo