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Top Forums UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers Tru64 Printing to something other than a printer Post 303017175 by Ken_Snauffer on Thursday 10th of May 2018 08:30:46 AM
Old 05-10-2018
Tru64 Printing to something other than a printer

I have been searching for a solution to a printing issue for several months now and have come up with no decently working solution. Please give input.

We have an old inventory control program running on TRU64 Unix V5.1B operating system. Around 2003 it was virtualized onto VMware via AVT's vtAlpha emulator. The program appears to have been written to print it's own internal events to two files (log_file and log_file1) which are then lpr'd to printers (control and logger) set up in the operating system via printcap and then the files are deleted. The printcap file showes these printers to be lp=@ip.address:9100 which are old HP print servers (lan to parrallel) with simple text only dot matrix printers attached.
These two printers print an average of about 3 single line entries per 1 minute, 98%+ of which is not needed. There is 1 print job (about 6 lines of text) submitted and printed every hour with an inventory update, which IS needed. Therefore, I cannot just redirect the printers to /dev/null.

We cannot just turn off the printers because the spooler then stops once it gets to about 100 entries and the program hults (but not the system). I say this because we can go in and purge the print queue (via lpc) and everything starts working again.

I did figure out that if we turn the spooler off, the log_file and log_file1 do not get deleted, but are instead appended to. The problem here is that 1 weeks worth of "held" printing ended up creating 1 log_file a little over 350KB and crashed the entire unix system because it filled up the minimal available disk space. We did have a backup of the VM, but this created about 8 hours of downtime till we cleaned up and updated the program's internal database.

A few things to mention...
1: There is a network obviously, but everything else is windows based.
2. There are no programmers that are willing to try to tackle re-writting the software (internal or external).
3. Everything that is "printed" is actually submitted to some sort of file and then that file is spooled to the printer (the log_file and log_file1 are just some of the files) then the files are deleted.
4. If these files exist, they are appened to and not over-written.

I am not sure what options I have, therefore I do not have specific quesitons on how to do something.
Can we change the printcap to print to a file or something else somewhere else?
Can we set up some sort of filter that only prints the information we want and just ignores the rest?
Are we just stuck and have to keep replacing print cartridges and paper regularly?
Is there anything else you would like to know to help you help me?

Thank you in advance.
 

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lpc(1B)                                              SunOS/BSD Compatibility Package Commands                                              lpc(1B)

NAME
lpc - line printer control program SYNOPSIS
/usr/ucb/lpc [ command [ parameter...]] DESCRIPTION
The lpc utility controls the operation of local printers. Use lpc to perform the following functions: o start or stop a printer, o disable or enable a printer's spooling queue, o rearrange the order of jobs in a print queue, or o display the status of a printer print queue and printer daemon. lpc can be run from the command line or interactively. Specifying lpc with the optional command and parameter arguments causes lpc to interpret the first argument as an lpc command, and all other arguments as parameters to that command. Specifying lpc without arguments causes it to run interactively, prompting the user for lpc commands with lpc>. By redirecting the standard input, lpc can read commands from a file. USAGE
lpc commands may be typed in their entirety or abbreviated to an unambiguous substring. Some lpc commands are available to all users; oth- ers are available only to super-users. All users may execute the following lpc commands: ? [command ...] | help [command ...] Displays a short description of command. command is an lpc command. If command is not specified, displays a list of lpc commands. exit | quit Exits from lpc. status [all | printer ...] Displays the status of print daemons and print queues. all specifies that this command is performed on all locally attached printers. printer indicates this command is performed on specific printers. Specify printer as an atomic name. See printers.conf(4) for infor- mation regarding naming conventions for atomic names. Only a super-user may execute the following lpc commands: abort [all | printer ...] Terminates an active spooling daemon. Disables printing (by preventing new daemons from being started by lpr(1B)) for printer. all specifies this command is performed on all locally attached printers. printer indicates this command is performed on specific printers. Specify printer as an atomic name. See printers.conf(4) for information regarding naming conventions for atomic names. clean [all | printer ...] Removes files created in the print spool directory by the print daemon from printer 's print queue. all specifies that this command is performed on all locally attached printers.printer indicates this command is performed on specific printers. Specify printer as an atomic name. See printers.conf(4) for information regarding naming conventions for atomic names. disable [all | printer ...] Turns off the print queue for printer. Prevents new printer jobs from being entered into the print queue for printerby lpr(1B). all specifies that this command is performed on all locally attached printers. printer indicates this command is performed on specific printers. Specify printer as an atomic name. See printers.conf(4) for information regarding naming conventions for atomic names. down [all | printer ...] [message] Turns the queue for printer off and disables printing on printer. Inserts message in the printer status file. message does not need to be quoted; multiple arguments to message are treated as arguments are to echo(1). Use down to take a printer down and inform users. all specifies that this command is performed on all locally attached printers. printer indicates this command is performed on specific printers. Specify printer as an atomic name. See printers.conf(4) for information regarding naming conventions for atomic names. enable [all | printer ...] Enables lpr(1B) to add new jobs in the spool queue. all specifies that this command is performed on all locally attached printers. printer indicates this command is performed on specific printers. Specify printer as an atomic name. See printers.conf(4) for infor- mation regarding naming conventions for atomic names. restart [all | printer ...] Attempts to start a new printer daemon. restart is useful when a print daemon dies unexpectedly and leaves jobs in the print queue. all specifies that this command is performed on all locally attached printers. printer indicates that this command is performed on specific printers. Specify printer as an atomic name. See printers.conf(4) for information regarding naming conventions for atomic names. start [all | printer ...] Enables printing. Starts a spooling daemon for the printer. all specifies that this command is performed on all locally attached printers. printer indicates the command is performed on specific printers. Specify printer as an atomic name. See printers.conf(4) for information regarding naming conventions for atomic names. stop [all | printer ...] Stops a spooling daemon after the current job is complete. Disables printing at that time. all specifies that this command is performed on all locally attached printers. printer indicates this command is performed on specific printers. Specify printer as an atomic name. See printers.conf(4) for information regarding naming conventions for atomic names. topq printer [request-ID ...] [user ...] Moves request-ID or print jobs belonging to user on printer to the beginning of the print queue. Specify user as a user's login name. Specify printer as an atomic name. See printers.conf(4) for information regarding naming conventions for atomic names. up [all | printer ...] Turns the queue for printer on and enables printing on printer. Deletes the message in the printer status file (inserted by down). Use up to undo the effects of down. all specifies that this command is performed on all locally attached printers. printer indicates this command is performed on specific printers. Specify printer as an atomic name. See printers.conf( 4) for information regarding naming conventions for atomic names. EXIT STATUS
The following exit values are returned: 0 Successful completion. non-zero An error occurred. FILES
/var/spool/lp/* LP print queue. /var/spool/lp/system/pstatus Printer status information file. ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWscplp | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
echo(1), lpq(1B), lpr(1B), lprm(1B), lpstat(1), lpsched(1M), lpshut(1M), svcadm(1M), printers.conf(4), attributes(5) DIAGNOSTICS
Use the svcs(1) utility to check if svc:/application/print/server is running. If it is not running, use svcadm enable svc:/applica- tion/print/server to start lpsched. See svcadm(1M). Ambiguous command Indicates that the lpc command or abbreviation matches more than one command. ?Invalid command Indicates that the lpc command or abbreviation is not recognized. ?Privileged command Indicates that the lpc command or abbreviation can be executed only by a super-user. lpc: printer: unknown printer to the print service Indicates that printer does not exist in the LP database. Check that printer was correctly specified. Use lpstat -p or the status command (see lpstat(1) or USAGE) to check the status of printers. lpc: error on opening queue to spooler Indicates that the connection to lpsched failed. Usually means that the printer server has died or is hung. Use /usr/lib/lp/lpsched to check if the printer spooler daemon is running. lpc: Can't send message to LP print service lpc: Can't receive message from LP print service Indicates that the LP print service stopped. Contact the LP administrator. lpc: Received unexpected message from LP print service Indicates a problem with the software. Contact the LP administrator. SunOS 5.10 5 Aug 2004 lpc(1B)
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