Shared Printers

[Mike Temkin]

In article <178 at motto.UUCP> murray at motto.UUCP (Murray S. Kucherawy) writes:
>grr at cbmvax.commodore.com (George Robbins) writes:
>>The sharing of DECserver printer ports is via LAT,
>>DECnet/Ultrix is *not* needed
>>to get this functionality.
>
>That's not what I had in mind.  Our printers are currently on the DECserver
>using LAT.  We want to take them off and put them on the VMS machine,
>but still allow the Ultrix machine and the other VMS machines to be able
>to use those printers.  All the machines are equipped with DECnet.
>
>Can this be done?
>
>=============================== Murray S. Kucherawy ==========================
>Motorola Canada, Ltd.     Communications Division, Toronto      [on work term]
>University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada               2B Math/Computer Science
>Internet: murray at motto.UUCP (work)       mskucherawy at watmath.UWaterloo.ca (UW)

>UUCP:     uunet!utai!lsuc!motto!murray   uunet!watmath!mskucherawy
>

Yes.  I just tested it out today.  It is possible with the DECnet-Ultrix
software.

Using the dcp command with the -P option you can print a file from Ultrix
to VMS (I also reassign SYS$PRINT to my local printer in my LOGIN.COM and it
works fine).

Going the other way you copy the file to the Ultrix system, via the COPY
command,
and then issue a PRINT/REMOTE command on VMS for the Ultrix system.  This will
by
default print to 'lp'.  What follows is from the DECnet-Ultrix 3.0 Release
Notes
(I have tested it with DECnet-Ultrix 4.0 and it works there also):

=============================================================================

2.4.6  Parameters for the File Access Listener (fal)

[some descriptions deleted]

For example, this command causes the DECnet object spawner to run the file
/etc/fal_params when fal receives a connection request:

     % ncp set object fal file /etc/fal_params

[more deleted stuff]

The following example assigns default values to the environmental variables
used by fal.  Note that the last line in the file executes the standard file,
/usr/etc/fal, which does the actual work.

     #! /bin/csh -f
     # explicitly set fal parameters to their default values
     #
     setenv fal_trace 0
     setenv fal_tracefile FAL_TRACE
     setenv fal_clobber 0
     setenv fal_umask 91
     setenv fal_print "/usr/ucb/lpr"
     exec /usr/etc/fal

[a table follows with a description of the variables]

===============================================================================

The above is from the notes with code corrected.  In the notes, "fal_var" is
written as "fal var" with the underscore mistakenly left out.

On my test system, I wanted the output to be printed on the printer "ln03" so
I inserted the following line before the fal_print line:

      setenv PRINTER ln03

That should do it.

Mike.

These opinions are my own, I can't even give them away.