Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!convex!dpz@convex.com From: dpz@convex.com (David Paul Zimmerman) Newsgroups: comp.dcom.lans Subject: Re: Termservers for printers (How to?) Message-ID: <1524@convex.UUCP> Date: 12 Aug 89 22:41:39 GMT References: <7130@spsd.uu.net> Sender: news@convex.UUCP Distribution: na Lines: 37 We've got some printers connected through cisco terminal servers, and they work pretty much OK. The setup is: lpd -> ttypN==ptypN -> "lp_pty" -> cisco port X==printer where -> is a tenuous path, and == is a fairly reliable hard path. The sequence of events: - lpd talks to the tty side of the tty-pty pair - a program "lp_pty" reads from the pty side of the tty-pty pair - you can open a raw TCP connection to a particular port on cisco term servers, and have the data come out on any particular serial line. At startup, lp_pty opens up a connection to the cisco term server on port 4000 + the decimal number of the serial line. - lp_pty writes the data over the TCP connection - the cisco term server reads the data and stuffs it down the requested serial line - the printer gets the data and does whatever it is supposed to Details to get this going include renaming a tty=pty pair to something that telnetd and rlogind can't find (like printername-ttysf, printername-ptysf). lpd talks at the tty side. You then run "lp_pty" with arguments to tell it what pty to read from, what host to open the TCP connection to, and what port to open it at. I mentioned a tenuous path vs a hard path above because once in a while I have to go through and kill/restart everything, because something along the way just stops. I think it is lp_pty, so I have to work on it a bit. Of course, acknowledgements: L. Ron Natalie @ Rutgers University took 'telnet' and munged it around to become 'lp_pty'. I took it :-) David David Paul Zimmerman dpz@convex.com CONVEX Computer Corp convex!dpz