Printcap for a large site; how???

[Patrick Powell]

In article <5067 at brazos.Rice.edu> pwa-b!m086414 at uunet.uu.net (Fred Comins) writes:
>X-Sun-Spots-Digest: Volume 9, Issue 50, message 2
>
>We have many printers and are getting another 45 laser jets.  The problem
>is that all users want to be able to get to any of the printers.   I'm
>looking for advice on the easiest way to keep this managed.  Currently we
>were planning to use rdist with 1 master printcap with an entrie for every
>printer.  Any better ideas??  Do I have to have a spool directory for
>each??  thanks

The PLP (Public Line Printer) available from vlsi.cs.umn.edu using
anonyumous ftp in pub/PLP.<release>.tar.Z has been updated to use the
following technique:

It has a list of printcap files it checks, starting with
/usr/spool/lpd/..../printcap.<hostname>, /usr/spool/lpd/..../printcap,
/usr/etc/printcap, /etc/printcap.

It searches for the FIRST printcap file with an entry for the named
printer.  (This is available in version PLP.5Mar90.tar.Z)

This allows you to 
1. Create a printcap file just for a host (printcap.<hostname>) that holds
   the local printer information.  
2. have a globally available printcap (/usr/spool/lpd/.../printcap,
   usr/etc/printcap, /etc/printcap) that holds global information, such as
   "remote printer, send to hacks.cs.berkeley.edu" types of entries.

WARNING WARNING WARNING: PLP tried to use the lockf (lock daemon) to avoid
problems with locking, etc.  THE LOCK DAEMON as supplied by SUN DOES NOT
WORK.  and will hang/crash your systems with monotonous regularity.  A
rewrite of PLP is underway to use a new scheme that will avoid all the
sillyness of having individual spool directories, etc.

Patrick POWELL
Prof. Patrick Powell, Dept. Computer Science, EECS 4-192,
University of Minnesota,  Minneapolis, MN 55455 (612)625-3543/625-4002