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Re: [MiNT] Printer spooling
Hi,
I just spend most of my weekend to get this d*** printing working on my Milan and Falcon.
Using lpd and NVDI I can generally print over the network but I noticed, that printing does not start automatically I allways have to restart lpd. Then all queued print jobs are printed ... but next time I print something, lpd has to be stopped / started again.
In my view this is some kind of communication problem. When printing a test page using lpr the job is queued, but the lpd deamon can't be accessed / reached:
# /usr/etc/lptest 20 20 | /usr/ucb/lpr -PHP880C)
/usr/ucb/lpr: connect: file not found
jobs queued, but can not start daemon.
The lpd process is running and /var/spool/lpd/lpd.lock reffers to the correct PID. How ever in the printer specific directory /var/spool/HP880C there is a lock file as well which pints to a different PID, which is not / no longer existing. I wonder if this PID is pointing to a sub process which was spawned when lpd started, found the queued print jobs and printed them.
Any ideas, thoughts, hints? Does some one run lpd including network printing successfully? I'm stuck with this communication problem ...
If some on is interested to set it up, lpd 5.90 sources can be found here: http://193.166.3.2/index/files/pub/atari/mint/lpd-590-mint.tar.gz
Based on the man pages included in the source package above, some internet searching and my own testing I compiled some notices in the attached TXT file.
Kind regards,
Heinz Schmidt
How to manually setup printing using lpd, ... on MiNT
revision 0.0.1 - Heinz Schmidt - initial version
I guess the most clean way to setup lpd is to make / make install it from the sources.
How ever this is a self made documentation how to put it all toghether manually. It is based on the lpd 5.90 sources and binaries which come with MiNT 98.
In the late 90is there was the commercial distribution "MiNt 98" which in cluded a lot of network programs and services. Some of the binaries are takten from this distribution.
For this documentation an existing EasyMint 1.72 installation was updated with MiNT kernel 1-17-0. The filesystem structure between MiNT 98 and EasyMint are a bit different so there are some directories which have to be created on EsayMint.
It's assumed that Mint including MintNet is setup and working properly
Files:
/usr/etc/pac Owner: root Groups: wheel, pac permissions: 755 man page: y
printer accounting information
/var/account/?acct raw accounting files
/var/account/?_sum summary accounting files
/etc/printcap printer description file
/usr/etc/lptest Owner: root Groups: wheel, lptest permissions: 755 man page: y
generate lineprinter ripple pattern; sample commad to use it: lptest | lpr -P<printer-name>
/usr/ucb/lprm Owner: root Groups: daemon permissions: 6711 man page: y
Remove jobs from the line printer spooling queue
/var/spool/* spool directory per printer
/var/spool/*/lock Lockfile to obtain pid of current deamon and job number of current job
/usr/ucb/lpr Owner: root Groupd: daemon, lpr permissions: 6711 man page: y
lpr uses a spooling deamon to print named files
/etc/printcap
/etc/passwd used for personal (user) identification
/usr/sbin/lpd* line printer deamons
/var/spool/output/* directories used for spooling (? isn't it /var/spool/* *=printer ?)
/var/spool/output/*/cf* deamon control files
/var/spool/output/*/df* data files specified in cf* files
/var/spool/output/*/tf* temporary copies of cf* files
/usr/ucb/lpq Owner: root Groups: daemon, lpq permissions: 6711 man page: y
spool queue examination program
/etc/printcap used to determine printer characteristics
/var/spool/* spool directory per printer
/var/spool/*/cf* control files
/var/spool/*/lock lock file to obtain currently active job
/usr/share/misc/termcap for manipulating the screen for repeted display
/usr/lib/lpd Owner: root Groups: wheel, lpd permissions: 700 man page: y
line printer spooler deamon
/etc/printcap printer description file
/etc/hosts.equiv machine names allowed printer access
/etc/hosts.lpd machine names allowes printer access (under other administrative control)
/var/spool/* spooldirectoies
/var/spool*/minfree min free space to leave
/dev/lp* line printer devices
/dev/printer socket for local requests
/usr/etc/lpc Owner: root Groups: daemon, lpc permissions: 2755 man page: y
line printer control program
/etc/printcap used to determine printer characteristics
/var/spool/* spool directory per printer
/var/spool/*/lock lock file for queue control
/usr/lib/lpf Owner: root Groups: wheel, lpf permissions: 755 man page: n
general printer filter
/etc/services must contain the lpd service definition as follows
# service name port/protocol aliases # comment
printer 515/tcp spooler # remote print spooling
/etc/syslog.conf should contain an entry for lpr/lpd, i.e.
lpr.debug /var/log/lpd-errs
/etc/passwd lp user with home drectory /var/spool/lpd
lp:*:4:7:lp/var/spool/lpd:/sbin/nologin
/etc/group lp group with ID 7 must exist
lp:*:7:daemon,lp
/etc/printcap example entry
HP880C:lf=/var/spool/HP880C/printer-log:sd=/var/spool/HP880C:lp=192.168.99.11:rp=lpt1:mx#0:sf:sh:
Findings:
- lpd, lpc, lpq, lprm, lptest work in general
- lpr is able to queue jobs
-- files are created successfully in the /var/spool/HP880C directory
- lpr is not able to trigger / communicate with lpd
-- lpd is not automatically picking up new print jobs as expected
-- when (stopping and) starting lpd, existing queued jobs are printed
--- this is normal behaviour since lpd is checking for jobs at start up (to catch up from crashes)
--- so still there seems to be a communication problem
- when started lpd creates it's PID and lock file /var/spool/lpd/lpd.lock as expected
??? questions, thougts, tests ???
- is /dev/printer available? >>> where does it point to? should I ceate it? what should it link to?
-- /dev/printer is only used for local printers
-- for the remote printer /dev/lp is used as defined in the /ect/printcap
- is there an /usr/sbin/lpd* ? whats needed here?
-- no
-- ln -s /usr/lib/lpd /usr/sbin/lpd > does not help
-- ln -s /usr/lib/lpd /usr/sbin/lpdHP880C > does not help
-- no idea if how/if this is used
- which PATH has to be set ?
-- /usr/ucb is in the PATH in Mint98
-- adding /usr/usb:/usr/lib/usr/etc to the path does not help, but makes using lpr, lprm, lpq, lptest, lpc much more easy
- all above files must be copied ...
-- done + permissions set
- portscan
-- does not show ANY open ports on my Milan, stange ... 515 should be open?
- how to install man pages into the existing EasyMint system?
Using lpd to print from NVDI:
Mint 98 includes a small program (lpspool) which helps to set this up easily.
NVID must be configured to print to a pipe which is named after the printer defined in /etc/printcap (/pipe/HP880C in my case).
The program lpspool must be running. It picks up the print data from the pipe and trites into the print queue using lpr. This results in to a regulat lpd print job. That's it!
- how to start lpspool?
-- manually
-- from mint.cnf lik in mint98: exec c:\multitos\bin\sh c:\multitos\bin\lpspool.prg
-- I wrote a small script for start / stop / status > this makes it easy to control lpspool and it can be easyliy included in i.e. std.services