How do I print to multiple printers

[BeejCyr]

I have need of a short term fix. I have a program, that when I print, I need the report to print out on two seperate printers. I know... change the program, or have the user print twice. Well... In this case its a legacy program and I do not have access to the code and the printing routines were hardcoded to look for a particular printer name.

I have a Linux (Samba) server and a Novell 5.1 server. So a solution for either platform will work for me.

So when the user prints the report, the program sends it to "report printer" and I can modify that windows printer queue to whatever I need to do. The report should print out on printer A and printer B. Also, these printers are compatible with each other so I am not worried about the printer driver.

How can this be done in Linux/Samba or Novell?

 

[mrregan]

Hi,
This might work...
Insert a line in your script ahead of the program statement
printername=/tmp/report; export printername
(program name here)
cat /tmp/report | lpr -P printera
cat /tmp/report | lpr -P printerb
rm /tmp/report
("printername" is your hard coded printer name in the program) Hopefully this would divert the print image to disk instead of to the printer device.

 

[BeejCyr]

Thanks mrregan.
I can see by your great answer that I was not clear on how this works.

The application is a windows app. Harcoded to print to a particular printer name. I can change the queue to which the printer prints so that it can print to the Linux/Samba machine or to a Novell print queue. The trick is how do I get one job sent to one queue to print on two different printers.