Date: Mon, 22 Sep 1997 20:35:24 +0100 (BST) From: Andrew Gordon <arg@arg1.demon.co.uk> To: hackers@freebsd.org Subject: lpr/lpd and HP networked printers Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.91.970922201442.28294C-100000@server.arg.sj.co.uk>
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For a long time (at several different sites) I have been using HP laserjets
with the 'jetdirect' internal ethernet option, spooling on a FreeBSD box and
driving the printer via the lpr protocol. This works fine, but the
HP prints a fairly useless 'banner' page after each job; since people
are mostly printing documents of only a couple of pages, this is a
considerable waste of paper, but I had been unable to discover any way to
switch it off. In particular, it is not affected by the "sh" capability
in /etc/printcap.
Having recently discovered that printing direct to the HP from an old 4.3BSD
system did _not_ produce the cover page, I investigated more closely, and
discovered that FreeBSD's lpr/lpd do not process the "sh" capability except
when printing to a local printer.
This is easy enough to fix, though it is not obvious which is the
correct way. There are a number of possibilities:
1) Do nothing. I suspect the authors of this code would say that this
is how it's meant to be, and that the HP ought to implement its
own equivalent of /etc/printcap for this purpose. However, it
doesn't, and getting HP to change their code is probably impossible.
2) Change lpr so that it takes into account the "sh" capability
when constructing the control file ("sh" would override any
-h, -C, -J, -U options on the command line). This is the
easiest to do, but in the situation where you have multiple
workstations printing through a central server, it requires
that the administrator's policy (headers or not) be replicated
on all the workstations that access the printer.
3) Change the network output side of lpd to take account of "sh", as it
already does when printing to a local printer (ie. modify the
control file before sending).
4) As 3), but introduce a new capability to control this behaviour
rather than using "sh".
5) Modify both lpr and lpd as above.
Any comments? If there is consensus on a change, I will contribute
patches.
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