Here's a rundown of my experiences with Lexmark MarkVision Professional 7.1.
First, I consider it to be a potentially useful tool in spite of its shortcomings. It has certainly improved over the original Java version. However ... It's a client-server system where both ends are written in Java. The client can be run either as a browser plugin or as a standalone application. This is less convenient than the original original version which was simply a Web app which didn't require installation of code on client machines. Being interpreted Java code, the server end consumes significant amounts of CPU resources. And of course, you must have the appropriate version du jour of the Java Runtime Environment installed on both server and client. Since we unfortunately have other Java apps on our servers which require different versions of the JRE, I had to mangle the MarkVision scripts to find the proper JRE. But that's OK since it couldn't find the improper JRE either. The client does some useful things, but the user interface is often non-intuitive. You can perform operations on a list of printers (such as disabling AppleTalk), but only those operations for which the developers have provided that functionality. You can neither list nor set IP address restrictions. You can get lots of interesting data about your printers, but you can neither print it nor save it to a file. You can't even "cut and paste" it. I do screen dumps. After expending a large amount of time setting up administrative and printer groups, I discovered that none of this configuration was being saved on the server, and that when the two server daemons were stopped, it all went away. After lengthy investigation, I found out that this was because I was running the daemons as "nobody". The installation documentation says the following about this: For security reasons, this daemon must be run as a normal user with no special privileges. Therefore, it is recommended to use an existing user ID for this daemon to run as. The default user ID will be nobody. During the installation of MarkVision Professional Server, you will be asked if you want to change the MarkVision Server user. If you don t want to use the default user nobody, create the user (e.g. markvision, mvp, etc.) before installing MarkVision Professional Server. No mention that you will repeatedly lose your configuration without warning if you use the default. Finally, having recently switched my desktop from Windoze to Linux, I tried installing MarkVision client. It should work fine - after all, it's Java. The following results occurred: host> /home/rcc2/.markvision/bin/mvp -t MVP is running in Debug Mode MarkVision System HOME is /usr/markvision MarkVision User HOME is MVP is running from /home/rcc2/.markvision/bin directory Unable to find MarkVision files. Install files into /usr/markvision or /home/rcc2/.markvision host> The pathetic response I got from Lexmark support was that I am running RedHat 7.2 and they "only support up to redhad 7.1 with Markvision Professional". If I had enough spare time, I could probably get this to work by editing their scripts, but I'm tired of fixing bad code for companies whose payroll I am not on. -Rick -- |Rick Cochran phone: 607-255-7618| |Cornell CIT - Systems & Operations - Net-Print FAX: 607-255-8521| |730 Rhodes Hall, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED]| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- YOU MUST BE A LIST MEMBER IN ORDER TO POST TO THE LPRNG MAILING LIST The address you post from MUST be your subscription address If you need help, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] (or lprng-requests or lprng-digest-requests) with the word 'help' in the body. For the impatient, to subscribe to a list with name LIST, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with: | example: subscribe LIST <mailaddr> | subscribe lprng-digest [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe LIST <mailaddr> | unsubscribe lprng [EMAIL PROTECTED] If you have major problems, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word LPRNGLIST in the SUBJECT line. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
