I need some help.

We have been trying to migrate our nearly-dead RH6.1/D3 over to
RH9.0/D3-7.4 for the last few weeks. Unfortunately we cannot get the
printing to work the way we had it in RH6.1 and it is driving us mad.
We have D3 printing to text-only (EPSON dot matrix) printers via LPD.

RH9.0 seems to use the "new improved" CUPS printing system. All we want
it to do is print a text file from D3 to the printer (as plain text) and
add a FF to the last page.

Unfortunately, CUPS wants to either print to the printer using it's
native language (meaning it prints everything as graphics or non-native
text and at a slow speed) or it wants to wrap the printjob in postscript
- and dump a PS file to the printer.

We have tried using the OMNI printer driver (prints as rastor), setting
the printer as a "text only printer" (which then prints PS to the
printer as text) and "raw".

RAW is the closest output to want we want - but we cannot add a FF to
the last page, which means that the next job starts printing on the same
page. Since there are multiple printer users - this is bad.

Surely I cannot be the only one who has struggled with getting CUPS to
work in RH9.0. All I had to do in RH6.1 is configure the printer as a
text printer and then add a FF to the end of job - simple and it worked.

Has anyone else been able to tame the beast. I cannot move on until
this is fixed.

Thanks
Matt

Hi Matt,

I have a few sites running RH9 and printing OK, so I am sure there is
some way to do what you need.

1. I think the "raw" print driver works best.
2. Try setting the page eject to 1 in the 3rd parameter of the D3
startshp command, e.g.

startshp 0,0,1,snnn.....
^

3. If this printer is D3-only, then you don't need to run it through
CUPS at all. Start a printer-specific pib (99 in this example) in dm,,
user-coldstart with the following two lines (you don't mention whether
or not this is a parallel printer, if not then just change this example
to point to the tty of the serial port the printer is connected to
instead of lp0):

!exec d3 99 -t lp0 -pprinter &
startptr 0,0,1,s99 (s

I think one of these should get you going.

/Scott Ballinger
Pareto Corporation
Edmonds WA USA
206 713 6006


Matt Hyne wrote:

"Matt Hyne" wrote
and then install LPRng -- heck, I've started doing that on rhel3, using
the LPRng rpm packages from the redhat 9 install media!

A more modest solution is to enhance your startshp command to do a
pipeline inside the parentheses -- instead of (lpr -Pmyprinter ) do
(/usr/bin/addff | lpr -Pmyprinter) where your shell script
/usr/bin/addff is
#!/bin/bash
# copy standard in to standard out, then emit a formfeed character.
/bin/cat
/bin/echo -en '\f'

Redhat 9 will install CUPS by default but you can choose LPRng during
the install.

If the INSTALL has already been completed, you can use the GNOME front
end to SWITCH PRINTING SYSTEMS.

Click on START / SYSTEM SETTINGS / MORE SYSTEM SETTINGS and then
PRINTER SWITCHING TOOL.

This will automatically swap CUPS for LPR, and move all the necessary
LINUX files to their new locations.

RAW printing should then be FINE, and change 3rd item in your STARTPTR
to 1.

John

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I moved back to LRPng and it is all
working fine.

Matt

On 19 Jul 2005 john (AT) mrpsystems (DOT) co.uk wrote: