lane@sumex-aim.stanford.edu (Christopher Lane) (06/27/89)
Since I've seen many more printing problems than solutions posted, I'll relate
the problems we had and the solution we're currently using in the hope it will
either help someone else or someone will suggest a better solution.
The environment:
We don't run NetInfo, our NeXTs are YP clients of a Sun 3 using NFS
to mount the user directory structure.
We don't have a NeXT laser printer, we use Apple LaserWriters and
Imagen Ultrascript printers accessed indirectly via the spool
directory on a Sun 4.
The problem:
lpd works fine if we don't run npd.
A number of applications won't print if npd isn't running ("Can't
connect to npd" message, or some such).
Interactions with npd lock up lpd (and we get "No daemon ..." messages
from lpq.
The solution:
After trying anything and everything, I found that restarting lpd
worked and I didn't have to restart npd. Thus I wrote a little
program, resetlpd, that kills off lpd and starts a new one. We run
this program every ten minutes using cron and it has its uid bit on
so (impatient) users can call it directly. So far this rather crude
fix has worked quite well.
I left in the np entry in the printcap file even though we don't
have one. I also have users set both the Printer and Resolution
defaults (using dwrite) as well as the standard Unix PRINTER variable.
I'd be interested in hearing better solutions--or I'll be glad to post the
resetlpd program if there aren't any!
- Christopher