*BSD News Article 83154


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From: wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu (Bill Paul)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Windows 95 + FreeBSD + lpr Question
Date: 18 Nov 1996 17:04:37 GMT
Organization: Columbia University Center for Telecommunications Research
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Message-ID: <56q4v5$s8e@sol.ctr.columbia.edu>
References: <32900DDC.7A6C@inJapan.net>
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Daring to challenge the will of the almighty Leviam00se, Doug Lerner
(doug@inJapan.net) had the courage to say:

: In our place, we have some Macs, some Windows 95 machines and two 
: FreeBSD machines. The other day we bought a printer with an Ethernet/
: TCP-IP card (an OKI data Microline 803PS2V).

: Everything, including the printer, is connected to a hub.

: After setting the printer's IP address, we were able to successfully 
: print out from our Macs. I probably will be able to print out from our 
: FreeBSD machines after I finish wading through the documentation on 
: how to set it up. But the problem is, we cannot print out at all from 
: our Windows 95 machines.

: Apparently - and I am no expert on Windows, so I am probably just 
: saying something well-known and obvious - Windows 95 does not support 
: "lpd", which is required for this to work.

That's correct: Lose95 doesn't know how to print to lpd servers.

: According to various friends and contact here, I need a "network 
: server that supports lpd" on the network. Then I can have my Windows 
: 95 machines use that server to print through.

Err... no. Lose95 can't print to an lpd server. Period. LoseNT can,
but that's not liable to be of much help.

: This seems to be done usually with a Windows NT machine. But I heard 
: it can also be done with Unix, which supports lpd.

Well, BSD UNIX supports lpr/lpd. System V has it's own whacked out printer
system. (Though some commercial system V implementations may include
support for lpr/lpd as an option.)

: Since we already have two FreeBSD machines on our system, and since 
: one is hardly doing anything right now anyway, is there a way we can 
: use it so that we can print from our Windows 95 machines?

Yes, there is. My suggestion: designate one of the FreeBSD machines to
be a print server, configure it to talk to the printer, then install Samba.
With Samba, you can make the FreeBSD machine look like a Micro$oft
Lan Mangler server. Get your Lose95 CD and install the Micro$oft TCP/IP
support, and install the printer as a remote printer rather than local.
Specify the printer name as \\freebsdhost.your.net\printername where
'printername' is the name you assign to the print queue in /etc/printcap.
Your Lose95 machine will happily print to your FreeBSD machine, which
will in turn spool the job via lpr and send it on to the printer.

I believe that Samba is included as a package on the FreeBSD CD-ROM.
Setting up lpr/lpd requires reading the man pages and setting up an
/etc/printcap file. If the printer has a built-in 'lpd' emulator of
some kind, it may be enough just to just specify the Okidata as a remote
printer of type 'raw' in /etc/printcap. If not, you may need to pipe
the data into a filter that sends the data for you. I find that ttcp
is good for this sort of thing (the source lives on ftp.sgi.com).

As a bonus, you will be able to mount the filesystems from the FreeBSD
server on the Lose95 clients. It may not be as fast as installing NFS
client software on the Lose95 machines, but it's cheap and relatively
hassle free. Furthermore, LoseNT will work just as well as a client as
Lose95.

-Bill

--
=============================================================================
-Bill Paul            (212) 854-6020 | System Manager, Master of Unix-Fu
Work:         wpaul@ctr.columbia.edu | Center for Telecommunications Research
Home:  wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu | Columbia University, New York City
=============================================================================
 "If you're ever in trouble, go to the CTR. Ask for Bill. He will help you."
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