Printing to a Win XP LPD Server from FreeBSD 5.4

Warren Block wblock at wonkity.com
Tue Sep 20 20:34:16 PDT 2005


On Tue, 20 Sep 2005, aksis wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am having a problem printing to a WinXP (home edition) LPD Server. The
> command:
>
> lptest | lpr -P lp-test
>
> print's to the printer successfuly.

According to your printcap file, this is an unfiltered queue.

> lpr -P lp test.ps
>
> doesn't print anything, but it is sending to the server (see below).

And "lp" is filtered through apsfilter.

This may result in your FreeBSD system translating the input file into 
whatever the printer expects, then sending it to the Windows system, 
which is also trying to translate it to what the printer expects.

I have little experience with using XP as an lpd server, but it's my 
impression that it will filter all input through whatever driver is 
defined for that printer.  If you want to do the translation on the 
FreeBSD system, use apsfilter and set the driver on the XP system to... 
whatever XP calls the "raw, untranslated, leave it alone" driver.

Or send the untranslated output from the FreeBSD system and let XP 
translate it through the driver.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA


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