hpnp getone snmp hp printers 3 port printserver

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From: Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us>
Subject: Re: Quick LP question
Date: Fri, 05 Jan 2001 18:51:06 -0800
References: <3a525c13.0@news> <G6K8tL.12K0@wjv.com> <cj355t4a69m8u898qfsbd5h1sfktc8lr9e@4ax.com> <G6KJ8o.13n0@wjv.com> <3a5343fb.0@news> <s2185tg8updtfd0n4hl9vea3cuoilbjaqe@4ax.com> <3a54aa16.0@news> <9355ah$1f$1@nnrp1.deja.com> 

On Fri, 05 Jan 2001 18:55:15 GMT, Dan <danielcmartin@my-deja.com> wrote:

>Dear Matt,
>Make sure the printer on port 1 is always on and on/line.
>Or, as Jeff Liebermann pointed out to me a while back, rename
>the snmp utility /etc/getone to some other name.
>I would encourage you to try netcat instead of using hpnp.
>Regards,
>Dan

That requires a bit of explanation.  The HP JunkDirect print server has
only one IP address for all 3 ports.  SCO HPNP uses SNMP (stupid network
management protocol) to determine if the print server is ready to print.
Because there were no 3 port print servers available at the time HPNP was
first inscribed, HPNP only polls the first port for status info.  If you
take the first printer offline, HPNP thinks that all 3ea ports are
offline and nothing works on any of the ports.  Put the printer on the
first port back online, and printing resumes on all ports.

The solution is a kludge.  If HPNP discovers that SNMP is not installed
on the server, it simply pretends that the printe server is always ready.
The /etc/getone program is what HPNP uses to get SNMP status.  It is not
used by any other SCO supplied program and can safetly be renamed to
something else.

If you get a totally bogus error about adding the printer to some
non-existant access list (I forgot the name), it's the /etc/getone
problem.

Incidentally, the reason SCO has not fixed this problem was that someone
decided to impliment IPP (Internet Printing Protocol) instead, which
includes all the features of HPNP printing.  However, this was deemed to
be a major project and the entire effort was dropped.  IPP is my favorite
example of collective insanity by an industry committee.  It is the lack
of work on HPNP to deal with modern print servers and ancient bugs that
inspired me to push Kevin Smith's netcat program as the solution to all
such nonsense.  I would strongly recommend trying netcat.  You can have
both running at the same time and as long as the printer names and
printer scripts are different, there should be no complications (famous
last words before every disaster).

Drivel:  Please do not send me 24bit true-colour screen dumps of whatever
ails your system via email.  I still get my mail via a 14.4Kbits/sec
connection and only have about 30MB of diskspace left on my 3.2v4.2 mail
server.  Sometimes I'm glad that SCO doesn't include an X11 screen
grabber.

-- 
Jeff Liebermann   jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
150 Felker St #D  Santa Cruz CA  95060
831-421-6491 pager   831-429-1240 fax
http://www.cruzio.com/~jeffl/sco/   SCO stuff

Macworld Mac Security Superguide $9.99

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