PSF/AIX installation questions?

ITEM: RTA000107155



Q:                                                                              
ABSTRACT:     PSF/6000 installation questions?                                  
SEARCH ARG:   aix psf6000 remote printing                                       
TOPIC THREAD: IX                                                                
              RISCSYSTEM_SOFTWARE                                               
              OTHER_SUPT_RISCSYSTEM_LPPS                                        
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This is a question for PSF/6000. Customer will be installing a                  
RS/6000 and PSF/6000. They will be attaching a 3900-001 channel attached        
printer to the RS/6000 via 370 Channel Emulator Adapter. The RS/6000            
is on an Ethernet. The network consists of Sun & PCs (WIN95)...                 
The form of the input data is AFPDS, PS, PCL and ASCII.                         
                                                                                
According to the PSF installation manual, the channel attached printer          
is installed and the queue name is defined. This is for local printing         
and testing with "enq -P (printername) /etc/motd"                               
                                                                                
For remote printing from the clients, the manual outlines the steps             
update the client and server which in this case would be the RS/6000.           
So the /etc/hosts are updated on each client to reflect the RS/6000             
IP address. The RS/6000 server is updated to reflect all the clients.           
The /etc/hosts.lpd on the server is updated. (IS THIS NEEDED?)                  
The lpd daemon is stated on the server.                                         
The remote queue is added for each client. Needed is a queue and                
queue device. This queue references the PSF print queue that was defined        
for the channel printer.                                                        
So, the remote client sends off a print job and it is routed to the             
PSF print queue and printed on the 3900-001 printer.                            
                                                                                
So if the channel printer queue is called 3900psf                              
and the remote queue is sun1; when we send a job to sun1 (those on the          
sun server), the job will get routed to the 3900psf and print.                  
I can have other remote queues with different names pointing to the             
3900psf. For example "sun2 or accounting or whatever"                           
                                                                                
Do I have an understanding which will work or am I missing something?           
Appreciate you assistance and review of this analysis...                        
                                                                                
A:                                                                              
I think you've got the gist of it, although there can be variations,            
and you may want to consider some additional customization relating             
to PostScript and PCL jobs.                                                     
                                                                                
1) Make sure you obtain and install the PTFs for PSF/AIX, because the           
S/370 Channel Emulator/A adapter will not work under AIX V4 without            
them.                                                                           
                                                                                
2) Your local set-up sounds correct.  Note the PSF queue doesn't do data        
stream sniffing; it can tell if an incoming file is AFPDS, but assumes          
that if it's not AFPDS then it must be ASCII.  There's no automatic             
detection of PCL or PostScript, so you may wish to review the PSF for           
AIX Print Administration Guide in the chapters for Customizing PCL and          
Customizing PostScript to learn how to set up local queues that will            
invoke the transforms for you.  (You may also need to customize the             
transform files for your installation--I'm referring to ps2afpd.cfg             
and ps2afp.cfg for PostScript and the equivalent files for PCL--                
particularly if your 3900 does not have the AFIG and DPE features               
installed.  On the other hand, if your 3900 does not have those                 
performance enhancement features and possibly additional memory, your           
customer will probably not be happy with the performance of printing           
the PostScript and PCL output there; the output of those transforms             
is bitmapped image, and without those features the files will be large          
and slow.)                                                                      
                                                                                
3) For remote printing, you would only need to edit /etc/hosts (or              
the equivalent files on the Sun and Windows workstations) *if* your             
customer is not using Domain Name Services.  If your customer is using          
DNS, then the various systems can probably find each other through the          
Name Servers.                                                                   
                                                                                
4) The purpose of the /etc/hosts.lpd file on the RS/6000 is to grant            
or preclude remote hosts' access to printers owned by the RS/6000.              
If you do not explicitly grant access here (either by individual remote         
client name for selective access or by adding the "+" sign to grant all         
remote hosts access) or in the /etc/hosts.equiv file (which grants             
broader access--not just printing), then your print jobs from your              
remote clients will be rejected ("Your host does not have line printer          
access") by the lpd daemon.                                                     
                                                                                
5) Whether or not you add a queue on the remote clients depends on              
the remote client.  For example, if you had a remote RS/6000 client,            
you would set up a remote queue to point to the PSF queue on the                
PSF server.  For Sun, you can set up remote queues, or you can use              
an enhanced lprafp command that is provided with PSF for AIX to print           
from the command line; there are other libraried items that discuss             
this in greater detail or you can see the README.lpr file in the                
/usr/lpp/psf/utils/lpr directory.                                               
                                                                                
Note that if you have configured multiple queues on the PSF/AIX side            
to automatically invoke the various transforms, then you may need              
multiple queues on the remote clients as well.                                  
                                                                                
I hope this helps.  Please reopen if you have additional questions.             
                                                                                
S e a r c h - k e y w o r d s:                                                  
psf/6000 psf/aix psf aix installation customization transform postscript        
pcl install sun lpr lpd remote /etc/hosts.lpd access line printer afp           
lprafp client permission                                                        
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                                
                                                                               


WWQA: ITEM: RTA000107155 ITEM: RTA000107155
Dated: 01/1999 Category: XPSF6000
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