Printing on a remote host using ISC's 386/ix

[Larry Williamson]

In article <8614 at bunny.GTE.COM> jdg0 at GTE.COM (Jose Diaz-Gonzalez) writes:

   I'm trying to figure out how to transparently use a laser printer, 
   located on an Ethernet host, from my 386 running 386/ix version 2.0.2.  
   The host is running Ultrix.  Obviously, I could just use a shell script 
   with "cat $1|rsh <machine_name> /usr/ucb/lpr" but I'm looking for
   something better.

I went through this very thing about 3 or 4 weeks ago. I received
quite a few suggestions. Some good, some not so good. I posted a
summary about 2 or 3 weeks ago, too bad you missed it.

There are pro's and con's for each of a number of the possible
solutions. The solution that suited my needs best was a small tcp
client/server package that Lawrence Freil (dogwood.atl.ga.us!lef) sent
me. In a nutshell, the package provides a small client you install as
an lp interface on all machines that want access to the remote
printer, and a small server that runs on the machine with the remote
printer. All print requests are forwarded to the server which submits
the request to lp.

Installation is very, very simple. Edited from the readme file...

1. type make
2. append inetd.conf to /etc/inetd.conf  (it is one entry).
3. copy spooler /etc/spooler (this is the server)
4. Create a /etc/printservers for your system from the example provided.
   (Very, very simple to do).
5. Hit inetd with a SIGHUP (kill -1) signal.
6. /usr/lib/lpadmin -p laser -v /dev/null -i pclient
7. You should now be in business.

If you want it, I can mail it to you. A uuencoded compressed tar is
8K. It is very simple generic tcp code. It installed on our 386/ix
system with no troubles at all.

-Larry