Printing to a Windows XP Print Queue from SCO

[jstlouis]

Hi,

I'm a yound SCO Openserver Adminstrator and I'm having some troubles with printing to remote printers. I've setup a Dell 1700n and a HP LaserJet 1200 printers on my network. They print find from my Windows XP Machine. I shared the printers on my XP Machine as 1700n and HPLaser.

I add Print Services for UNIX on my Windows XP Machine and now I'm trying to print from my SCO Server running OpenServer release 5.0.7.

I created an entry in my /etc/hosts file called winxp and pointed it to the IP Address of my XP PC. I then started scoadmin printers and began installing a remote printer. I allowed SCO to configure rlp. I could not choose the remote "windows" option as it was greyed out, so I had to set it up using remote "UNIX".

This worked fine, I am able to do an lpstat -t and see that the print queue's I created are there and that sco recognizes that they are on an XP Machine.

From the command line I can print to the printers perfectly fine, but I cannot use any of the pitch changing options. Haven't tried any other options though either.

It always prints in 17 pitch.

I've tried the following ways:

lp -d <printer> -o pica <file>
lp -d <printer> -o cpi=pica <file>
lp -d <printer> -o cpi=10 <file>
lp -d <printer> -o 10 <file>

The funny thing is, if I setup my HPLaser on a JetDirect, and use the HP Network Printer Manager Utility, it works great, I can change pitch, etc. But if I connect the Dell to a JetDirect, it doesn't want to accept any of the options that way either. My printer is suppose to support the full set of PCL commands.

Does anybody have any ideas for me.

Is there a better way of setting of network printers that creating a queue on an XP Machine?

I am having a lot of trouble setting up printers that are not setup on a JetDirect. I end up using rlp to configure these printers, and usually I can get them to print, but I can never figure out why they don't accept the standard lp options (mostly changing pitch).

Please help me. I don't want to have to install SAMBA or some other 3rd party application if I don't have to. There must be a way to do it with SCO without additional software.

Is there a good site I can look at that would give some detailed examples of remote printing to networks printers with SCO.

Thank-you very much for you help in advance. This has become a nightmare for me.

 

[motoslide]

The reason you are unable to affect the printer to modify it's pitch (10/12/17 CPI, Portrait/Landscape, etc) is that the lpr approach doesn't use standard printer interface scripts.
If you were to use VisionFS (available in earlier 5.0.x releases) or SAMBA, you would benefit by using the interface scripts.
I believe there's another way with lpr by using filters which are specified in /etc/printcap. But, I've not done that because VisionFS has always been so easy.

man printcap
man lpfilter

After reading through those, go ahead and use SAMBA instead.

 

[jstlouis]

What is better VisionFS or SAMBA.

I though I read something about SCO not using VisionFS anymore and to use SAMBA instead? Is this true.

I though VisionFS was used to share unix files and printers with windows and SAMBA was used to share Windows files and printers with UNIX. Is this correct?

I also tried specifying a filter in the printcap file, but it didn't work for me. also tried specifying an interface using the lp -i option, this didn't work for me either.

Thanks so much for the help.

Jeff

 

[motoslide]

VisionFS was a special implementation SAMBA which was available for OpenServer for many years. I think they discontinued it for 5.0.7 and went with SAMBA instead.
There are lots of Tek-Tip entries dealing with the configuration of SAMBA.
(Andrew Tridgell: Samba)
I'm not an expert there, so it would be senseless for me to offer detailed advice.

Just to set the record straight though, VisionFS DOES support printing to Windows-shared printers using "visionfs print".