Printing to a Netwok attached printer

ITEM: RTA000070093



Our customer has a Xerox printer with an Ethernet card that uses the            
lpd protocol. At the RS/6000 the printer is configured as a                     
traditional remote printer. When they try to print an ordinary                  
ascii file ( /etc/profile , for instance) the file prints all in                
one line, ignoring carriage returns and line feeds. The manual of               
the printer says that an option should be passed to the printer. That           
option is lpa (for ascii files) . They have an example for BSD systems:         
in the /etc/printcap in the definition of the printer this option               
should be passed by the parameter                                               
   rp=lpa                                                                       
How can I pass this option to the printer in AIX v.3.2.5 ?                      
Using rembak -o lpa doesn't work ¢ Neither rembak -X ¢¢                         
Can you help me with this ?                                                     
By the way, we can ftp the file to the printer, and it prints OK if             
we set the ascii option in the ftp program ¢                                   
There should be a way of doing the same for the remote lpd program.             
Do you know how ?                                                               
                                                                                
                                                                                
ANSWER                                                                          
We do not have the hardware to correctly test this, but it may be worth         
your time to try using rembak -o rp -o lpa.  This is the way 'enq' works,       
so it may work the same for going to the Xerox printer.                         
                                                                                
If this does not work, then you can get around this problem by setting          
up a single remote queue to the printer, as you have done, and then make        
a virtual printer to set the ASCII mode and provide all of the carriage         
returns and line feeds for you.                                                 
                                                                                
To do this, you will need to do the following:                                 
                                                                                
        1.  Obtain root on the system.                                          
        2.  Type:                                                               
                touch /dev/lxx                                                  
        3.  Type:                                                               
                mkvirprt                                                        
        4.  Choose the option of a printer attached to the host.                
        5.  When given the prompt to enter the device, you should type          
            in 'lxx'.  This is using a "dummy" device so you can fool the       
            system into thinking there is a printer there.  Choose the          
            ASCII virtual printer option.                                       
        6.  You can set up the virtual printer any way you wish:  with          
            header and trailer pages, etc...  When you finish setting           
            up the virtual printer, you should type:                            
                lsvirprt                                                       
        7.  Now, choose the queue you just created.  Now type:                  
                mo=enq -P                                            
            Where the queuename is the name of the remote queue to the          
            Xerox printer.                                                      
        8.  Exit the program.                                                   
                                                                                
Now, you have a full featured remote queue.  It can also provide header         
and trailer pages for you.                                                      
                                                                                
S e a r c h - k e y w o r d s:                                                  
RISC PRINTER REMOTE                                                             
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                               


WWQA: ITEM: RTA000070093 ITEM: RTA000070093
Dated: 05/1996 Category: ITSAI6000PR
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