PSF/AIX: NOVELL AND HP LASERJET QUESTIONS

ITEM: RTA000040334



QUESTION:                                                                       
Three questions in regards to PSF/AIX:                                          
                                                                                
1)  Customer has applications that use LPSTAT and LPR to query status           
    of print jobs.  If this customer installs PSF/6000 will their               
    applications that utilize LPSTAT and LPR still provide useful               
    information about various print jobs?                                       
                                                                                
2)  Customer has Ethernet Novell LAN installed with HP Laserjet 4               
    printers.  They have installed HP Jet Direct cards in these printers        
    to allow the attachment to the LAN.  In addition to these Jet Direct        
    cards they have Jet Direct Software that runs on the Novell LAN             
    Server.  Will this still work with PSF/6000?                                
                                                                                
3)  If I remove the Novell Print Server and allow PSF/6000 to be the           
    print server, could the customer use the Jet Direct cards in the            
    HP Laserjet 4 printers to attach to the Ethernet LAN or would they          
    need to obtain 4033's?                                                      
                                                                                
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A:                                                                              
                                                                                
R1) Yes, lpr and lpstat can be used with PSF/6000 with some                     
    limitations (see below). For querying printer status with                   
    lpstat, note that with PCL printers, a job will first go to the             
    PSF/6000 queue, be processed, and then be respooled to the PCL              
    (or whatever the queuename) queue. So a print job processed                 
    through PSF/6000 could show up in two different places at                   
    different times, depending on when you issue the lpstat command.            
                                                                               
    For lpr, please see the PSF/AIX Print Administration book                   
    (S544-3817) for a list of the AIX print command flags and how they          
    relate to PSF/6000.  Not all flags on all commands can be used.             
    For example, you can use -J, -#, -h, -P, -m, -r, -s on the lpr              
    command. However, you can not use the following flags on the lpr            
    command with PSF/6000:                                                      
              i,T,w,c,d,f,g,l,n,p,t,v,1,2,3,4,C                                 
    Please see S544-3817 for additional information.  (Also shows               
    flags that can/cannot be used with lp, enq, and qprt.)                      
                                                                                
R2) I want to make sure I understood your question correctly. If you're         
    asking if PSF/AXI and Novell can both access the printer, my                
    understanding (and you should verify this with HP) is that if you           
    have an HP4SI or an HP4SI-MX with the JetDirect card or the newer           
    JetDirect EX Interface, the printer can service multiple servers           
    automatically.  The literature indicates that a HP4 can only handle         
    one server at a time, configurable from the operator panel. There           
    are PSF/2 customers that have tested an HP4SI successfully using            
    a Novell server and a PSF/2 system on a token ring.                         
                                                                                
R3) We have not tested PSF/AIX with HP printers with Jet Direct cards.          
    AIX 3.2.5 does support printers attached using the Jet Direct cards.        
    Since for PCL (or PPDS) printers, PSF/AIX processes/transforms the          
    print file and then requeues it to the normal AIX queue for those           
    printers, we believe a printer attached by means of a Jet Direct    d       
    card will work.                                                             
                                                                                
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WWQA: ITEM: RTA000040334 ITEM: RTA000040334
Dated: 03/1996 Category: XPSF6000
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