Network Printing
One major advantage of networking is the ability to share printers connected to a network. However,
network printing is different from Stand alone printing. In stand alone printing, the printer is attached
directly to the computer and the software prints directly to it or to a temporary holding area on the
hard drive (if you have a print spooler like the Windows Print Manager operating) and then directly to
the printer. Consequently to implement stand alone printing we simply connect the printer to the
computer, load the printer drivers into our software and it should print properly. Network printing is a
little more complicated.
1. We need to decide where we are going to connect our printers and the print server
method we are going to use.
Printers can either be connected to the Fileserver (called Local printers as they are connected or
local to the Fileserver) or connected to a workstation and available for use by other computers
on the network. These are called Remote printers as they are not directly attached to the
Fileserver. Printers can also be connected directly to the network using an internal network card
or connected to a computer which is dedicated to network printing and so will not be used as a
workstation. It can be running a dedicated print server or be running remote printer software and
PCONSOLE (mentioned later). It is not used for any other job other than allowing jobs to print
to the printer and deleting print jobs from the print queues. This last method is an excellent
method for printing but obviously you lose the use of a computer (you could use an old 286).
I will concentrate on the remote printer method using RPRINTER.EXE on a workstation.
2. We need to configure or set up the Print Server.
This is done using the PCONSOLE menu utility. We need to:
- give the print server a name
- define the print queues- these are actually subdirectories of the SYSTEM directory where the
print jobs are stored temporarily by Netware, until they are ready to be printed
- define the printers-local or remote and whether they are parallel or serial
- assign the printers to the print queues
- decide upon who can use particular printers and who can operate the print server (and other
tasks)
3. Activate the Print server on the File server.
This is done at the Fileserver console by typing
LOAD PSERVER <print server name given in 2>
4. Activate the Remote Printer software on the computer which will direct printing to the
printer that is attached to it.
This is done at the computer which is connected to the printer typing
RPRINTER <print server name given in 2> <number of the printer from 2>
5. Finally we need to direct the users print jobs to the appropriate print queue (and then to
the printer)
This is done using the CAPTURE command - usually in a Login Script or batch file. The
CAPTURE command has many options. The most commonly used are:
Queue = Queue Name
- which queue to print to
Local = logical port number
- which local port to capture (The default is LPT1 if this
option is not used.)
Timeout = number
- Print the file in the print queue if nothing has been added to it after the
time specified by .
NoTabs
NoBanner
NoFormFeed
For example
CAPTURE Q=HPLASER4L NB NT NFF TI=30
Note: We still need to load the printer drivers into our software and configure them as we would for
a stand alone printing setup.
ENDCAP
is used to stop the capture command
What happens when you print to a network printer.
- The Application sends the data to the printer driver which then passes it on (it thinks to DOS).
- The Netware DOS Requester, NETX, intercepts the output and redirects the printing to the print
queue specified in the capture command.
- It will stay in the print queue until it is ready to print (an end of job instruction is sent, or nothing has
been added to the file for the time period specified in the capture command).
- The Printer Server then directs the print job to the specified printer along the network wire.
- The Remote printer software (RPRINTER.EXE) intercepts the job and directs it to the printer attached
to the computer on which it is running.
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