fpt@unccvax.UUCP (fred p toth) (08/11/89)
Here's hoping some of you have seen this one! We at Washburn have a couple of brand new cubes, and the first brick wall I've hit involves remote printing. We have the NeXT networked to a sun, which can spool printing to a LaserWriter. Everything but printing works fine on the network (rlogin, nfs mounts, mail, etc.). It appears that when the NeXT lpd creates a job file (cfXXXXXXX in the spool directory), it uses some non-standard, undocumented commands (called 'cards' in the original ucb source). For example, here is a copy of a command file as it appears in the sun's spool directory from the NeXT (the sun is 'moon' and the NeXT is 'saturn'): Zmoon Xlw Hsaturn Proot Jtest.print.file Csaturn Lroot fdfA003saturn UdfA003saturn Ntest.print.file The first 2 lines cause the sun to fail to print the file. What's more, the documentation for lpd (on 4.3 or SunOS or NeXT) does not mention any use of 'Z' or 'X'. If I stop printing with the queue enabled (to catch the command files) and edit out the first two lines, the file prints fine. Are these two lines perhaps the result of a debug mode being left on? The information seems to represent lpd's idea of which remote system and printer the command is destined for. Clearly unnecessary information, considering that the command file arrives on the remote system safely. Some other related notes: The reverse situation works fine. The sun can print to the NeXT with no problems. Also, the Z and X lines appear both with and without NetInfo running. The NeXT lpd ignores (I guess) these lines. If I fake them into an incoming command file from the Sun, the file still prints fine on the NeXT. I'd appreciate any help on this. Our sun is our Appletalk gateway and through it we can spool NeXT printing to LaserWriters, a Linotronic L300, etc. Thanks, Fred Toth Washburn Graphics, Inc. 704-372-5270 decvax!mcnc!unccvax!wgivax!fpt