Re: print filter?
Bob Beck wrote: I used to fight with such insanity constantly. However since printers are frequently sold and shipped with a basically undocumented interface, and more than half the time these filter utilites are barely reverse engineered POS's I decided long ago that fighting with them was counterprodocutive. easily 2/3 of the time (depending on your printer model) they are unreliable at best. simple answer, postscript printers are cheap. find a printer that speaks postscript and avoid all the nonsense. I got one (LexMark C510) a year and a half ago for $325 CDN that speaks postscript and talks to my print spooler on ethernet, and most of my printer woes went away. Sorry to hi-jack this thread - but I'm currently fighting with a Lexmark C500n - when talking lpd over the network to it, it always resets the connection without printing the job. The printer does have lpd enabled - but I've not managed to get it working could you enlighten me :~) My printcap and log message from /var/log/lpd-errs follows: x41:fred ~ cat /etc/printcap # $OpenBSD: printcap,v 1.4 2003/03/28 21:32:30 jmc Exp $ #lp|local line printer:\ # :lp=/dev/lp:sd=/var/spool/output:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs: #rp|remote line printer:\ # :lp=:rm=printhost:rp=lp:sd=/var/spool/output:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs: rp|c500|laser|lexmark:\ :lp=:\ :rm=c500.crowsons.net:\ :rp=ps:\ :sd=/var/spool/C500:\ :lf=/var/log/lpd-errs: x41:fred ~ lpr -Plaser which.ps x41:fred ~ tail -2 /var/log/lpd-errs Jul 17 18:14:36 x41 lpd[18903]: x41.crowsons.net requests printjob laser Jul 17 18:14:39 x41 lpd[18903]: laser: lost connection x41:fred ~ Thanks Fred -- http://www.crowsons.com/puters/x41.htm
Re: print filter?
On Tue, 17 Jul 2007, Fred Crowson wrote: Bob Beck wrote: I used to fight with such insanity constantly. However since printers are frequently sold and shipped with a basically undocumented interface, and more than half the time these filter utilites are barely reverse engineered POS's I decided long ago that fighting with them was counterprodocutive. easily 2/3 of the time (depending on your printer model) they are unreliable at best. simple answer, postscript printers are cheap. find a printer that speaks postscript and avoid all the nonsense. I got one (LexMark C510) a year and a half ago for $325 CDN that speaks postscript and talks to my print spooler on ethernet, and most of my printer woes went away. Sorry to hi-jack this thread - but I'm currently fighting with a Lexmark C500n - when talking lpd over the network to it, it always resets the connection without printing the job. The printer does have lpd enabled - but I've not managed to get it working could you enlighten me :~) My printcap and log message from /var/log/lpd-errs follows: x41:fred ~ cat /etc/printcap # $OpenBSD: printcap,v 1.4 2003/03/28 21:32:30 jmc Exp $ #lp|local line printer:\ # :lp=/dev/lp:sd=/var/spool/output:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs: #rp|remote line printer:\ # :lp=:rm=printhost:rp=lp:sd=/var/spool/output:lf=/var/log/lpd-errs: rp|c500|laser|lexmark:\ :lp=:\ :rm=c500.crowsons.net:\ :rp=ps:\ :sd=/var/spool/C500:\ :lf=/var/log/lpd-errs: x41:fred ~ lpr -Plaser which.ps x41:fred ~ tail -2 /var/log/lpd-errs Jul 17 18:14:36 x41 lpd[18903]: x41.crowsons.net requests printjob laser Jul 17 18:14:39 x41 lpd[18903]: laser: lost connection x41:fred ~ Try surpressing the burst page header: add ``sh''. -Otto
Re: print filter?
Otto Moerbeek wrote: Try surpressing the burst page header: add ``sh''. -Otto Hi Otto, Adding :sh: to my printcap didn't resolve the issue, and the Lexmark C500 is still resetting the connection. I have taken up the issue with Lexmark support, but they are painfully slow and not very helpful :~( they also said they don't support Unix so I'm using Mac OS X to try and get the issue resolved... Thanks for the quick response. Fred -- http://www.crowsons.com/puters/x41.htm
Re: print filter?
On Tue, Jul 17, 2007 at 09:24:06AM -0600, Bob Beck wrote: I used to fight with such insanity constantly. However since printers are frequently sold and shipped with a basically undocumented interface, and more than half the time these filter utilites are barely reverse engineered POS's I decided well, HP itself released hpijs under a BSD license. Epson is giving documentation and printers-on-loan to the gutenprint project. I'm pretty sure Cannon is giving documentation to gutenprint developers too. long ago that fighting with them was counterprodocutive. easily 2/3 of the time (depending on your printer model) they are unreliable at best. well, just because people are getting docs doesn't mean they are writing good code :( simple answer, postscript printers are cheap. find a printer that speaks postscript and avoid all the nonsense. I got one (LexMark C510) a year and a half ago for $325 CDN that speaks postscript and talks to my print spooler on ethernet, and most of my printer woes went away. that's what I already wrote, in not so many words ... plus these printers are probably cheaper than cheap ink-jets in the long run, considering ink replacement costs and the lifespan of the printer itself. -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org
Re: print filter?
On Tuesday 17 July 2007, Fred Crowson wrote: rp|c500|laser|lexmark:\ :lp=:\ :rm=c500.crowsons.net:\ :rp=ps:\ :sd=/var/spool/C500:\ :lf=/var/log/lpd-errs: x41:fred ~ lpr -Plaser which.ps x41:fred ~ tail -2 /var/log/lpd-errs Jul 17 18:14:36 x41 lpd[18903]: x41.crowsons.net requests printjob laser Jul 17 18:14:39 x41 lpd[18903]: laser: lost connection x41:fred ~ I'm guessing you've already made sure that c500.crowsons.net actually resolves to an IP address *inside* your network and you can ping it. I'm also guessing you've made sure your which.ps file is good. You may have fumble-fingered the command to create the ps file of the man page. If you're not sure, just download something that is known-good. Such as: http://www.usenix.org/publications/library/proceedings/usenix98/freenix/deraa dt.ps Check the permissions and ownership of /var/spool/C500 (in my case it's the default /var/spool/output). $ ls -laF /var/spool total 36 drwxr-xr-x 9 root wheel 512 Mar 10 17:31 ./ drwxr-xr-x 26 root wheel 512 Jun 29 00:52 ../ drwxrwx--- 2 smmsp smmsp 512 Jul 17 01:31 clientmqueue/ dr-xr-xr-x 5 root wheel 512 Mar 10 17:31 ftp/ drwxrwxr-t 2 uucp dialer 512 Mar 10 17:31 lock/ drwx-- 2 root wheel 512 Jul 17 01:44 mqueue/ drwxrwxr-x 2 root daemon 512 Jul 17 18:38 output/ drwxr-xr-x 2 uucp daemon 512 Mar 10 17:31 uucp/ drwxrwxr-t 2 uucp daemon 512 Mar 10 17:31 uucppublic/ $ ls -laF /var/spool/output/ total 20 drwxrwxr-x 2 rootdaemon 512 Jul 17 18:38 ./ drwxr-xr-x 9 rootwheel 512 Mar 10 17:31 ../ -rw-rw---x 1 daemon daemon4 Jul 17 18:38 .seq* -rw-r- 1 daemon daemon 26 Jul 17 18:38 lock -rw-rw 1 daemon daemon 17 Jul 17 18:38 status Lastly you might want to try :rp=lp: in your /etc/printcap. If you get the remote printer name wrong, it's bad juju. Make sure you kill and restart lpd after your changes. kind regards, jcr
Re: print filter?
On Sat, Jul 14, 2007 at 02:38:14PM -0400, Douglas Allan Tutty wrote: I'm familiar with apsfilter and actually just got it to work with this printer on my debian box with debian's stock gs-gpl. Part of my reason for asking on OBSD is that I'm exploring the larger issue of licensing. I know that OBSD folk tend to prefer stuff with a BSD license rather than that GPL. Only because they're in the business of making and distributing free operating systems. GPL software makes it difficult to distribute compiled binaries (because you must comply with GPL constraints on source distribution), and in turn restricts people who are making and distributing products derived from OpenBSD. BSD takes a very free definition of free, which includes you are free to take this stuff and turn it into a product, sell it, and not give your customers the source code. For example, Microsoft took the Windows TCP/IP stack from BSD - they couldn't have used the Linux one. So, the BSD licence is much more generous than GPL. However, if you are an end-user, and don't intend packaging or selling your own product which includes this functionality, then using GPL'd software is fine. In some ways it's better for you, because if you got a binary distribution and the original vendor goes bust, you should still have the source and be able to maintain it yourself. I agree that the apsfilter licence(*) is extremely unclear. However, it is published on the Internet for anyone to download. Do you believe the author would take you to court for not sending a postcard? Pragmatically, if the software does want you want, I suggest you could take that (minimal) risk. Or, just send the guy a postcard. He obviously likes them. Regards, Brian. (*) http://www.apsfilter.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/src/apsfilter/LICENSE?rev=1.5.2.3content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markupcvsroot=apsfilteronly_with_tag=RELENG_7
print filter?
I'm wondering what the OBSD people generally use for print filtering. I have an old IBM PC Graphics printer (dot-matrix) attached to my debian box but everyone there seems to use CUPS. I could just as easily connect the printer to my OBSD box. The last time I used this printer to print postscript was a few years ago. It was connected to a debian box running LPRng but debian's gs did't have a driver that would work. I ended up using foomatic and gs-esp with the ML 320 driver. foomatic and cups seems like going overboard for something so simple. So what do OBSD people use? Thanks, Doug.
Re: print filter?
On 7/14/07, Douglas Allan Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm wondering what the OBSD people generally use for print filtering. I have an old IBM PC Graphics printer (dot-matrix) attached to my debian box but everyone there seems to use CUPS. I could just as easily connect the printer to my OBSD box. The last time I used this printer to print postscript was a few years ago. It was connected to a debian box running LPRng but debian's gs did't have a driver that would work. I ended up using foomatic and gs-esp with the ML 320 driver. foomatic and cups seems like going overboard for something so simple. So what do OBSD people use? Have a look at apsfilter. Simple to install as a pre-compiled binary package. apsfilter needs ghostscript as well as a2ps. There one small thing you may have to fix. a reference to gawk in the SETUP script. I just changed it to /usr/bin/awk. =Adriaan=
Re: print filter?
On Sat, Jul 14, 2007 at 07:22:41PM +0200, Adriaan wrote: On 7/14/07, Douglas Allan Tutty [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm wondering what the OBSD people generally use for print filtering. I have an old IBM PC Graphics printer (dot-matrix) attached to my debian box but everyone there seems to use CUPS. I could just as easily connect the printer to my OBSD box. Have a look at apsfilter. Simple to install as a pre-compiled binary package. apsfilter needs ghostscript as well as a2ps. There one small thing you may have to fix. a reference to gawk in the SETUP script. I just changed it to /usr/bin/awk. Thanks Adriaan, I'm familiar with apsfilter and actually just got it to work with this printer on my debian box with debian's stock gs-gpl. Part of my reason for asking on OBSD is that I'm exploring the larger issue of licensing. I know that OBSD folk tend to prefer stuff with a BSD license rather than that GPL. Apsfilter is GPL (plus a 'please send a postcard'). So I supposet a more specific but more general question would be: Is there a pure BSD-licensed print filtering option? Thanks, Doug.
