Hi Cathy-
I dont have all the answers, but I have a few observations to share:
1) those extra files being sent to the printer seem to be blank postscript
jobs.
2) Those Asante appletalk/ethernet bridge boxes can be real snarky. We
had a different model connecting an appletalk net (computers &
printers) to an ethernet network. It was flakey, and it mattered what
sequence you powered up it, the Macs, the printer, etc. I am sorry to say
I forget the details, and glad to say all our Macs are now on ethernet so
the box is no longer used.
3) My general experience with nice postscript printers like those from
apple is not to bother with spooling, let the printer accept jobs
sequentially, and let the machine submitting the job que it locally.
4) Many apple printers also have a RS-232/422 connection as well as
appletalk...it may be a solution to hook it up to a serial port on a PC
or Mac and have it serve it.
Sorry I cannot offer more - I am more of a programmer too. I have been
writing linux kernel modules for almost 2 years, but I just figured out
how to print from Linux this past month. :-) But I have hacked macs since
'85.
--Pete
On Sat, 30 Dec 2000, Cathy Segedy
wrote:
>
> Hi people. Forgive me if this has all been covered in the past. I have a
> problem.
> (this is long. I wasn't sure what was important so I mentioned a lot).
>
> history:
> we have a Laserwriter Select (from Apple). It has an appletalk cable
> out the back, hooked to a contraption with the name Asantetalk on it. This
> apparently converts to regular ethernet, as an ethernet cable comes out of
> it. This plugs into our ethernet hub.
> we have a router which forwards appletalk, and it seems to be set up
> correctly.
> we have macs and we have linux boxes.
>
> It used to be the case that one of the linux machines spooled to the
> printer, such that lpr worked from that linux box. The other linux machine
> has a printcap to point to the first linux machine. This worked fine also.
> And the macs could print to the queue on the linux box and it would print
> fine.
>
> I did not set this up. I am a software engineer, and have done sysadmin
> stuff way long ago, maybe 15 years ago. I'm not completely clueless, but
> its been a _long_ time since I got my fingers into this stuff, so I'm
> almost clueless. :-)
>
> OK. So. Near as I can tell, the chain of events is that the person who
> did all of this stuff was trying to set up a way to get page-counts, so we
> could limit the size of jobs. Or, he might have been trying to get the
> second printer to work. Not succeeding in whichever endeavor he was
> undertaking, he put everything back as it was. But, not completely as it
> was. For one thing, I'm not sure we did spooling before.
>
> next, sometime later, someone else decided the office where the equipment
> lived, needed to be cleaned. In the process of doing this, she managed to
> unplug the UPS, not bother to call me up and tell me something was beeping,
> and then she managed to shutdown the phone system, and ethernet connection
> as well. Since I didn't get there until many hours later, everything was
> down when I arrived. After I got all back up, the printers no longer
> worked.
>
> My suspicion is that things were not quite put back correctly to the way it
> had been before the experimentation, but since nothing was shutdown,
> everything remembered enough to keep functioning, until everything got shut
> off.
>
> I am just having time now to tackle the problem. What I discovered is that
> the .paprc file had the wrong name for the printer in it. (the name we had
> when it was NOT spooled, I think). So I was getting errors with the NBP
> lookup.
> When I fixed the name, the linux machine could now see the printer.
>
> But. when I print, the system goes and starts creating a bunch of small
> files that it wants to send to the printer. It also sends the file I
> request to print, but that never gets to the printer, because of these
> other files, which don't seem to be doing much, but which seem to take
> priority.
>
> I took the line about acct (accounting) out of the printcap and the if and
> of lines, and got it to only send my file, except that it seemed to lose
> the file (or think it sent it to the printer?) and then would requeue it
> over and over again. Only one was queued at a time.
>
> =======================================================
> So this is my printcap entry:
> lp|somename|LaserWriter Select 360 on AppleTalk:\
> :af=/var/spool/lpd/laser/acct:\
> :sd=/var/spool/lpd/laser:\
> :lp=/var/spool/lpd/laser/null:\
> :lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:pw#80:sh:\
> :of=/usr/lib/atalk/filters/ofpap:\
> :if=/usr/lib/atalk/filters/ifpap:\
> :tf=/usr/lib/atalk/filters/tfpap:\
> :df=/usr/lib/atalk/filters/dfpap:
>
> ======================================================
> the spare files being sent to the printer look like this:
> %!PS-Adobe-2.0
> %%Pages: (atend)
> %%DocumentFonts: Courier
> /GSV save def % global VM
> /SP {
> /SV save def % save vmstate
> dup /H exch def % save font height
> exch findfont exch scalefont setfont % select font
> ( ) stringwidth pop /W exch def % save font width
> 0.5 sub 72 mul /CY exch def % save start Y
> pop 0.5 add 72 mul /CX exch def % save start X
> CX CY moveto % make current point
> } bind def
> /S /show load def
> /NL { CX CY H sub dup /CY exch def moveto } bind def
> /CR { CX CY moveto } bind def
> /B { W neg 0 rmoveto}bind def
> /T { W mul 0 rmoveto}bind def
> /EP { SV restore showpage } bind def
> %%EndProlog
> %%Page: ? 1
> 0 8.500000 11.000000 /Courier 11 SP
> EP
> %%Trailer
> GSV restore
> %%Pages: 1
> %%EOF
>
> ======================================================
>
>
> so. any suggestions?
> anyone know -- what is making these files?
> why so many are being generated?
> why the printer doesn't seem to be responding to anything?
>
>
> a last note. It is _absolutely impossible_ to ask the original person who
> worked on this what he was doing.
>
> thanks for any help!
> Cathy
>
>
>
> ===========================================================
> Catherine A. Segedy Consultant Software Engineer
> Unix,Macintosh,NT,VMS
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Voice: (603) 437-1337 Fax: (603) 437-1425
>
> http://www.enigami.com/~csegedy
> http://www.enigami.com/resumes/cathy.shtml
>
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>
>
>
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