onemorebyte
Vendor
Hello, all!
I've got a confusing (to me, anyway) problem on my hands, and I was hoping that someone here could point me in the right direction.
I'm doing some tech work for a vetinary hopsital/clinic with a remote location that I was just able to convince to move from their ageing 9600 baud leased line/multimux setup to broadband access via TCP/IP, and I'm having some intermittant printing problems.
Here's the setup:
Main Location
-------------
SCO Openserver 5.0.6 (with latest patches I could find)
Intel PIII 1GHz, 512 Mb RAM, 80GB ATA100 HD, 52x CD-ROM, 3.5" FD, Travan IDE Tape Drive, PCI RocketPort Interface Card w/ 16 port RS-232 (RJ45) Port Board
Phoebe Octopus 4-port Broadband Router (set up to place the server in the DMZ)
Scientific Atlanta DPX110 Cable modem
w/ Charter Communications Business access Static IP
BetterChoice AVS (Vetinary Clinic Accounting/Control software)
Remote Location
---------------
SCO Openserver 5.0.6 (with latest patches I could find)
AMD XP 2200+, 256Mb RAM, 40Gb HD, 52x CD-ROM, 3.5" FD, 4 COM ports (2 On-Board, 2-port ISA Jumper-configurable)
Westel WireSpeed A90-210030-04 ADSL Modem (set up to forward all ports to the remote's server)
w/ Bellsouth Business access Psudo-Dynamic IP (If you lose power, you get another IP)
Attached Equipment:
Okidata Okipage 14ex (/dev/lp0)
Dymo LabelWriter 300SE (/dev/tty2a)
WYSE Wyse60 (/dev/tty1a)
Right now, I'm telneting in from the remote location to the main location and logging into the AVS account which brings up the software. Then you have to log into the software as "DVCAVS" to tell it that you're working from the remote location. This then tells the software to use different printers for output.
Here's how it's supposed to work:
You tell AVS that you want to print an invoice.
AVS looks at it's printer 'definition' and cblconfig to figure out that it needs to send the information to the spooler, a la "lp -s -c -d <spoolname>".
(That in and of itself was a month-long pain in the ASCII to get their tech support to tell me.)
The spooler then sends the information across the internet
to the remote server's spooler, where it gets sent to the correct printer (either the Dymo or the Oki).
Now mind you, I'm a little new to Openserver, but I do understand the basic idea/concepts that _I_ think should be in play here.
Occationally, the remote system will stop printing to the Oki for no apparent (to me) reason. I've got the spooler set up to restart the job if it errors, but it's not for some reason, because I can go to "/usr/spool/lpd/dlaser" and tell lp to print the job/file it's hung on, and it will print it out and continue with the other jobs, until it hits another that it gets stuck on.
Also, sometimes I'll get root mail that there's a problem with printing to 'dlaser':
<Start clip of email>
Subject: Status of lp request dlaser-291
Your request dlaser-291 destined for dlaser
encountered an error while printing on printer dlaser.
Reason for failure:
Illegal printer option stty='9600 ignored
Illegal printer option cs8 ignored
Illegal printer option -parenb ignored
Illegal printer option rtsflow ignored
Illegal printer option ctsflow ignored
Illegal printer option -ortsfl' ignored
<End clip of email>
Is it just me, or isn't this a little strange since 'dlaser' is attached to /dev/lp0?
In any case, I've pretty much exhaused all of my ideas other than trying to find a COBOL runtime (for free) that would allow me to migrate them to some flavor of Linux... and please don't tell me that this kind of thing is fixed in 5.0.7... They're not willing to shell out any more $$ to SCO... (And yes, I did ask them...)
And help would be immediately and loudly appreciated.
Richard M. Smirl
richard at onemorebyte.com
I've got a confusing (to me, anyway) problem on my hands, and I was hoping that someone here could point me in the right direction.
I'm doing some tech work for a vetinary hopsital/clinic with a remote location that I was just able to convince to move from their ageing 9600 baud leased line/multimux setup to broadband access via TCP/IP, and I'm having some intermittant printing problems.
Here's the setup:
Main Location
-------------
SCO Openserver 5.0.6 (with latest patches I could find)
Intel PIII 1GHz, 512 Mb RAM, 80GB ATA100 HD, 52x CD-ROM, 3.5" FD, Travan IDE Tape Drive, PCI RocketPort Interface Card w/ 16 port RS-232 (RJ45) Port Board
Phoebe Octopus 4-port Broadband Router (set up to place the server in the DMZ)
Scientific Atlanta DPX110 Cable modem
w/ Charter Communications Business access Static IP
BetterChoice AVS (Vetinary Clinic Accounting/Control software)
Remote Location
---------------
SCO Openserver 5.0.6 (with latest patches I could find)
AMD XP 2200+, 256Mb RAM, 40Gb HD, 52x CD-ROM, 3.5" FD, 4 COM ports (2 On-Board, 2-port ISA Jumper-configurable)
Westel WireSpeed A90-210030-04 ADSL Modem (set up to forward all ports to the remote's server)
w/ Bellsouth Business access Psudo-Dynamic IP (If you lose power, you get another IP)
Attached Equipment:
Okidata Okipage 14ex (/dev/lp0)
Dymo LabelWriter 300SE (/dev/tty2a)
WYSE Wyse60 (/dev/tty1a)
Right now, I'm telneting in from the remote location to the main location and logging into the AVS account which brings up the software. Then you have to log into the software as "DVCAVS" to tell it that you're working from the remote location. This then tells the software to use different printers for output.
Here's how it's supposed to work:
You tell AVS that you want to print an invoice.
AVS looks at it's printer 'definition' and cblconfig to figure out that it needs to send the information to the spooler, a la "lp -s -c -d <spoolname>".
(That in and of itself was a month-long pain in the ASCII to get their tech support to tell me.)
The spooler then sends the information across the internet
to the remote server's spooler, where it gets sent to the correct printer (either the Dymo or the Oki).
Now mind you, I'm a little new to Openserver, but I do understand the basic idea/concepts that _I_ think should be in play here.
Occationally, the remote system will stop printing to the Oki for no apparent (to me) reason. I've got the spooler set up to restart the job if it errors, but it's not for some reason, because I can go to "/usr/spool/lpd/dlaser" and tell lp to print the job/file it's hung on, and it will print it out and continue with the other jobs, until it hits another that it gets stuck on.
Also, sometimes I'll get root mail that there's a problem with printing to 'dlaser':
<Start clip of email>
Subject: Status of lp request dlaser-291
Your request dlaser-291 destined for dlaser
encountered an error while printing on printer dlaser.
Reason for failure:
Illegal printer option stty='9600 ignored
Illegal printer option cs8 ignored
Illegal printer option -parenb ignored
Illegal printer option rtsflow ignored
Illegal printer option ctsflow ignored
Illegal printer option -ortsfl' ignored
<End clip of email>
Is it just me, or isn't this a little strange since 'dlaser' is attached to /dev/lp0?
In any case, I've pretty much exhaused all of my ideas other than trying to find a COBOL runtime (for free) that would allow me to migrate them to some flavor of Linux... and please don't tell me that this kind of thing is fixed in 5.0.7... They're not willing to shell out any more $$ to SCO... (And yes, I did ask them...)
And help would be immediately and loudly appreciated.
Richard M. Smirl
richard at onemorebyte.com