News Group Posts

windows smb printing facetwin

From: "Brian K. White" <brian@aljex.com>
References: <3BEA958F.4F275FC1@sympatico.ca> 
Subject: Re: remote printing with SCO open 5.0.6
Date: Fri, 09 Nov 2001 07:58:41 GMT


"Serge Gauthier" <sysco@sympatico.ca> wrote in message
news:3BEA958F.4F275FC1@sympatico.ca...
> what exactly i need to install a remote win98se printer on a SCOopen
> server. i try evrething i know and nothings work.... my SCO does not
> view my win98 printer.
>
> on win 98 i activated the file and printer share, i share my printer.
> i'm under a tcp-ip network set on 192.168.10.X and when i want to add my
> printer with SCOADMIN --� printer --� printer manager, when i choose to
> add a remote --� windows.. sco never see the win98 printer.. please help
> me!!
>
> thx in advence!
>
> Sylvain Dufour

I don't know how that "windows" button in the scoadmin printer manager is
supposed to work, I've never seen it except greyed-out/inactive. to print to
and ordinary windows shared printer, The only way I know is to install and
use an SMB server on unix. An SMB server allows the unix box to participate
in netbios file&print sharing. Windows can see the unix box in network
neighborhood and print to it's printers, access it's hard drive (the
printers & directories you set up that is)
and they also have client utilities that let unix access windows shared
files & printers.
three smb servers I know of are:

facetwin: commercial, 3rd party, costs bux, but you can douwnload and
install a 30-day, 50-user, free demo right this instant and be printing in 5
minutes flat, because the install is effortless and the config is easy
(well, it is once youve done it once, before that I'm sure it's as big a
mystery as anything else you've never done, but, if it were in the daytime
you could call facetwin and they'd talk you through it, then it's easy
again.
ftp://ftp.facetwin.com/evals/facetwin/sco5/facetwin.z
ftp://ftp.facetwin.com/evals/facetwin/sco5/install.sh
http://www.facetwin.com/

visionfs: available for free if your version of OpenServer is one of a
certain range of versions, otherwise it costs. commercial, made by sco not
3rd party. install is more of a pain since you have to find and install
patches to get it up to the current version, I've not used it in some time,
I remember it as being a bit of a pain in the neck and not too reliable
(would stop working after a few days or weeks for no reason I could tell,
but there have been many upgrades since then so maybe it's better now. a lot
of people do use it sucessfully, so... *shrug*
can't tell you exactly where to get it. this is part of the pain in the neck
factor. there are several different places and methods where you can "get
visionfs" but only one is up to date and I forget where that is at the
moment, and this is not even counting the added wrench in the works caused
by the sco.com --> sco.com migration currently still in progress...

samba: free/gnu aka "skunkware". I have not used it on sco, only on linux
and freebsd. some people claim they get better performance out of samba than
visionfs, some claim the other way around, and i've never seen any
comparison against facetwin. sinec facetwin is available on linux, and I
have used both facetwin and samba a lot on linux, i can say that facetwin
has been the more reliable, but that's on linux. one thing I can say about
samba, regardless of the OS, is that it's easier to configure than visionfs,
not as easy as facetwin.

finally, for you particular question, facetwin is hands down the easiest way
to set up printing from unix to windows, and... it occurs to me that you may
be able to do this using the demo even after the demo expires, because as
far as I know, when the demo expires, what stops working is the server, not
the client. that is, windows won't be able to print to unix, or log in using
facetwin terminal emulator, or acces shared unix directories, but I bet the
client still works and so unix can print to windows.

here is the whole process of installing facetwin from scratch and installing
and testing a windows printer.

windows computer name is JENNY
printer on JENNY is shared as HPLASER

ftp ftp.facetwin.com
cd evals/facetwin/sco5
get facetwin.z
get install.sh
quit
sh ./install.sh
rm facetwin.z install.sh
fct_rlpadmin -a jen -m HPLaserJet -n JENNY -r HPLASER -u dummy
echo "Hi Jenny, this is a test." |lp -d fct_jen

that's it, you're done. there is now a printer named "fct_jen" installed and
enabled and accepting jobs.
(as long as the network is working properly)

--
Brian K. White  --  brian@aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
+++++[>+++[>+++++>+++++++<<-]<-]>>+.>.+++++.+++++++.-.[>+<---]>++.
filePro BBx  Linux SCO  Prosper/FACTS AutoCAD  #callahans Satriani

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