TTYA device assigned to a remote printer?

[itfellow]

Hi all, I have a weird question. I am running OpenServer 5.0.5b with a combination of a couple fo network printers and some printers running through a concentrator, all of which work fine.

We also run our main program using OpenBasic, which does a lot of printing through all of these printers. I need to add another network printer, and I have the printer workign just fine on the system side, but OpenBasic will apparently only recognize the printer if it is assigned to a TTY. The two existing network printers, even though their actual devices, as seen through lpstat, are /dev/null, are entered into OpenBasic's printer configuration as assigned to /dev/ttya07 and /dev/ttya08 and they work just fine.

I'd like to try to set up this new printer in the same way, but I have no idea how to get it assigned to a device like the other two are. I cannot find in any configuration files where the two network printers are assigned to ttya07 and ttya08.

Anybody know how this might be done?

 

[PHV]

I guess you have to read the concentrator's documentation.

Hope This Helps, PH.
Want to get great answers to your Tek-Tips questions? Have a look at FAQ219-2884 or FAQ222-2244

 

[itfellow]

The printers in question are network printers. They are not on the concentrator - strictly TCP/IP. I have another network printer that I want to set up teh same way, also not on the concentrator. In fact, the printers on the concentrator have nothing to do with any of this, so maybe I shouldn't have mentioned them at all.

 

[apeasecpc]

That sounds like a strange setup to me. Your software should direct print jobs through the printer name, not the associated device. Going directly to the device (if there even is a real device) would bypass and interfere with the normal spooling of print jobs.

"ttya07" and "ttya08" are typically device names for serial ports on a digiboard. Do you have a digiboard or other multiport serial card? Do these device names actually exist on your system?

What are the different prompts in the OpenBasic printer setup? My suspicion is that the device name has nothing to do with actually printing, and that whoever set up the printers in the past just arbatrarily chose those device names.

Your software documentation should provide the information you need to set up the printers.

 

[stanhubble]

Yes those are digiboard device names. With networked printers that don't use the lpd mechanism (eg smb) you set them up as local printers and use the "interface" file to do the appropriate commands to talk to the printer. The lp daemon needs a local device name to handle the scheduling and it could be that the digi device names were convenient to use instead of creating new names in /dev. There are problems if all your network printers use the same device (ie /dev/null).

 

[apeasecpc]

I have never run into problems re-using the same device name for multiple printers, however I have also heard that there can be conflicts. I presume I avoided the problems because I am using a regular file as my device name instead of the null device (see

http://docsrv.sco.com:507/en/OSAdminG/prntT.addspool.html)

You can create separate new null devices for each printer. The following commands create a device called "lpnull" from the root login. Replace the "4" and "128" with the major and minor numbers of /dev/null on your system. Man "mknod" for more info:

cd /dev 
mknod lpnull c 4 128 
chown lp lpnull 
chgrp lp lpnull 
chmod 660 lpnull

 

[itfellow]

Hey guys, you are absolutely right about the ttya being digiboard device names, of course. I got some of the printer names confused,since all of our printers are named P1, P2,...,P31, etc. The printer whose setup I need to duplicate is actually a spooled printer which is referenced by name. This all should have been obvious to me, but I'm still too new to the ways of the Unix world.

It turns out my problem really is that OpenBasic can't seem to refresh the list of spooled printers. It is supposed to refresh when the config tool is opened, but it just hangs on that part. I have no idea what system call it's making, but it seems to be failing.

apeasecpc, thanks for the tip for the null devices. It won't apply here, but it will be useful for some of the other printer stuff I've been struggling with as I get to know this system.