RE: [TCLUG:7538] printing (lpr/lpd?) problems

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

Ok, i've been off this for 2 weeks or so, (gone to HPWorld; and then my
return heralded a large number of equipment failures) But trying to get back
to it...
(to review; I can't get reports to print from my accounting application.
printer works fine otherwise; even prints screens with it's 'print
screen'-type function; but reports jam in the print spooler. looks like the
cause is a ^L at the end of the report files generated)

>>         ok. tried printing with "| lpr -P hp4v 2>/dev/null"; no change.
>> [the report] still jams in the print spool (although the file size that
lpq reports is
>> now 2700 bytes, rather than 2731 bytes)
>
>Weird.  Can't explain the file size difference.   You might want to print it
>both ways and do a 'diff' on them to see what changed.  As long as they are
>in the print queue you can examine the raw data in the
>/var/spool/lpd/[printername] directory.
        ok. I futzed w/ pulling the report directly from the spool. turns
out the difference in size between the report output as a file, and the one
output to the printer, is a bunch of (looks like) printer control codes that
are at the *beginning* of the file. (not like the ^L, which is at the end)
        this (and some other experiments) kind of rule out those printer
control codes (in the configuration file) being the problem.

>Sounds like you're _very_ close to an answer.  ^L is a page eject character.
>Can this be turned off in OSAS?  Are there any other PCL printer commands
>embedded in the report file?
        I tried; poked around with the printer configuration settings. same
problem keeps coming up.
        just upgraded lpr-0.31 to lpr-0.33. RH6 apparently uses lpr-0.35;
but that would require new libraries. (which means an upgrade/reinstall of
the whole system as i understand it). doesn't solve the problem.
        I don't know *anything* about PCL commands. like I said above; there
are some characters (control codes?) at the beginning of the file that's
sent to the printer [not present in the one sent to a file].
        
        if I could get it to print to a file; I suppose I could try to
kludge a sed script to remove the annoying ^L character at the end, then
print it. this is a bit beyond my understanding, tho...

at HPWorld there was a vendor selling something called 'EasySpooler'. kind
of pricey ($1200 for a 6-printer license; their minimum); but from what they
told me, it's a heck of a lot better than lpr/lpd. (doesn't block all queues
when one jams, etc). they've got a Linux version now; and I just talked to
one of their sales droids. I asked if they had a 'light' version; for fewer
printers. he said they were in discussions about what to do for the Linux
version; that perhaps they were going to treat it differently from their
other versions (for NT, HP/UX, Solaris, etc). He wasn't very clear on what
the possibilities were, tho. (I don't think they really know themselves,
either). he said there'll be a trial/demo version available on their website
within a week or two.

how difficult is it to install lprNG?

thanks much,
Carl Soderstrom
System Administrator	307 Brighton Ave. 
Minnesota DHIA		Buffalo, MN	
carls@agritech.com		(612) 682-1091