[tlug] "Interesting" printing issue.

[Godwin Stewart <gstewart@example.com>]

This is YAOTCHTNBM[1].

I have a server providing print services for 2 workstations.

The (Linux, Slackware 8.0) server is running the stock BSD line printer
daemon - and before you all throw your arms up in despair, it works
perfectly well except for this weirdness. The clients are spooling using
LPRng, which hands the job off to apsfilter, which in turn pumps it through
GhostScript/hpijs and then spits the raster over to the server's "lp" queue.
An example entry of a client-site printcap is:

lp|ijs/DESKJET_5600;r=600x600;q=high;c=gray;p=a4;m=auto:\
    :lp=:\
    :rm=192.168.1.1:\
    :rp=lp:\
    :if=/etc/apsfilter/basedir/bin/apsfilter:\
    :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
    :lf=/var/spool/lpd/lp/log:\
    :af=/var/spool/lpd/lp/acct:\
    :mx#0:\
    :sh:

The entry in the server's printcap file is:

# Generic printer:
lp:lp=/dev/lp0:sd=/var/spool/lpd:sh:ff=

For every print job, lpd mails off not one, but THREE identical mails to the
originator of the job, saying "Your printer job ((STDIN)) was not printed
because it was not linked to the original file".

There I was thinking that unhelpful error messages were the domain of
Windows...

Despite what the message says, the job *was* printed! Perfectly!

The problem used not to occur when I was using SAMBA as the print server
(there used to be Windows machines in the network but there aren't any
more), so it's definitely network related. Samba accepts the inbound data,
spools it locally in a temp directory and hands it off to lpr locally.

So far what I've done is to /dev/null via procmailrc all mail coming from
halt@example.com but that's probably not a solution. I'd like to get to the
bottom of this if possible.

Searching on google I find a bucketload of people getting the same "not
linked to the original file" message, but their print jobs do fail, whereas
mine don't.

Any ideas (other than "don't use LPR")?






[1] - Yet Another Oddity That Could Happen To Nobody But Me

-- 
G. Stewart   --   gstewart@example.com -- gstewart@example.com
Registered Linux user #284683 (Slackware 9.0, Linux 2.6.7-em8300)
--------------------------------------------------------------
Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying
in hospitals dying of nothing.

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