Spooling LAN Man Printstation Files to a LAN Man Server

• Microsoft LAN Manager, version 2.1

SUMMARY

The LAN Manager Print Station program (PRINTSTA.EXE) allows you to share a printer attached to a workstation (printstation). In the default implementation of PRINTSTA, print jobs are written to a spool file on the printstation, then sent to the printer. This spool file requires conventional memory on the printstation.

MORE INFORMATION

An option for conserving memory on the printstation is to turn off spooling with the command "printsta /f:0". However, this has the disadvantage of occupying any computer that sends a file to the printstation while the file is printing. (Status information returned by the PRINTSTA command reflects "max spool files = 1" even if you have disabled spooling.)

Another option is to set up the spool files on a LAN Manager server. To create a printer queue on a LAN Manager server and direct those files to the printstation, follow this procedure:

(Note: You must use PRINTSTA.EXE version 2.2 (dated 12/1/92, 22112 bytes).

1. On the printstation, enter the command

   printsta /f:0

   When PRINSTA starts, watch for the name of the new share in the format

   Print Queue: \\printstation_name\lpt




2. On the server, use the OS/2 Print Manager to
   
   
   1. Setup Printer.
      
      Choose Setup, Printers, Add. Type a name for your printer (for example, LASER), choose LPT3 (or any other LPT port you are not using) as the device, and MSNULL as the default printer driver. Choose Add.
      
      If MSNULL does not appear on the list, use Setup, Printer Install, New, and type c:\lanman\drivers as the New Printer Driver Location.
   
   
   
   2. Setup Queue.
      
      Choose Setup, Queue, Add. Type a name for the queue (for example, LASER_Q) and select the printer you defined in step 2a above (that is, LASER). Choose Add.
   
   
   



3. Log on with administrative privileges.



4. Connect to the printstation with the command

   net use lptx: \\printstation_name\lpt

   where lptx: is the port you specified in step 2a and \\printstation_name\lpt is the name returned in step 1.



5. Share the Print Manager queue you created.
   
   
   1. In the Using the LAN Manager Net Admin screen, choose View, Shared resources, Add share, Printer, OK.
   
   
   
   2. Select the queue name you created in step 2b (LASER_Q) and choose OK, Done. Assign permissions for the share and choose OK.
   
   
   



6. You can now use the printer queue on the server from a workstation by typing

   net use lptx: \\servername\sharename

   where lptx: is the logical port that you want to associate with the printer and \\servername\sharename is the share you set up in step 5 above.
   
   Note: Any implementation of PRINTSTA requires that all local print jobs sent from the printstation itself be sent directly to the physical port that the printer is connected to (designated by the PRINTSTA /l: option; default=lpt1). The printstation cannot send output to its own PRINTSTA share.



7. Because a redirected resource can be shared but not vice versa (redirecting an already-shared resource) you need to make some changes to the boot up processing on the server. To do this, create a print- operator-only user with minimal privilege (use PRINTOP for this example). Assign the user a password (this example uses PRINTOP).



8. Specify a logon script for this user as follows:

   net use /p:no
   net share printsta /d
   net use lpt4: \\let\lpt
   net share printsta=lpt4: /print

   Change the parameters such as printsta, \\let and LPT4: as needed.



9. Put the following line in STARTUP.CMD after NET START SERVER

   NET LOGON PRINTOP PRINTOP

REFERENCES

Microsoft LAN Manager "Update for Users," page 8.

Microsoft LAN Manager "Update for Administrators," page 66.

Additional query words: 2.10 2.1

Keywords : kbnetwork ntdriver
Version : :2.1
Platform :
Issue type :