printing (lpr/lpd?) problems

["Carl Wilhelm Soderstrom" <carls@agritech.com>]

Hello, i'm new to this list; I just joined up after coming to the meeting
last weekend. Hopefully someone here can help me with a problem I'm having.
        We bought a new accounting application, and I convinced the boss to
get OSAS 6.0 for Linux. I'm installing it on a RedHat5.1 server, and
attempting to print to a HP LaserJet 4V via a JetDirect network card.
        our accounting app won't print reports. (in most cases). screens
will print (there's a sort of print-screen function included in the
program); but reports tend to go into the print spooler, and jam up in
there, refusing to print.
        our consultant could get reports to print, when he was logged in
with Windows Telnet. however, when he logged in with TinyTerm, it wouldn't
work. I poked around with terminal emulations, and actually got a report to
print once; I think it's because I was using vt100 emulation. (however, I
haven't been able to repeat that since)
        problem is, the app seems to be a direct port from SCO; and the
interface doesn't exactly work right under anything but SCOANSI emulation.
(although AT386 emulation is about as good). ;(
        when the jobs are stuck in the print queue i can see that they're
printing from "standard input"; which is one of the reasonsi'm suspecting
the problem has something to do with the terminal emulation. (the program
seems to be too stupid to readily recognize networked printers; so in order
to print to one, you need to use something like "> lpr -P hp4v -s
2>/dev/null" rather than '/dev/lp1')

anyone got a clue what to try next? if I can upgrade RH5.1 to 6.0 without
damaging anything in the process, would that help? (never done a Linux
upgrade myself; nor do I know anything about how smooth they are).

if anyone has a working fix for this; i'm sure I can get them paid as a
'consultant'.

Carl Soderstrom.

after you beat your head against a brick wall for a while, it begins to hurt...
System Administrator	307 Brighton Ave. 
Minnesota DHIA		Buffalo, MN	
carls@agritech.com		(612) 682-1091