[techtalk] Newbie: my printer.

[Simon Britnell]

JoAnn Elliott wrote:

> This helps me as well.

Glad to be of service.

> Soooooo, where do I find this Ghostscript program? I sure
> hope it comes in an rpm, as I am new and so far have best success with
> those, but I can do it at prompt, just not the most confidence.

>From the "rpm", I guess you've got RedHat or Mandrake.  Ghostscript does come in
an RPM, but it's probably already installed.  The command is gs, but you'll
almost never use it on the command line.  I'm presently away from my Linux PC
working at a site that's innundated with winnt, so I can't look things up very
well at present.  There's a HOWTO about setting up printers and/or ghostscript,
but there's probably an easier way.  Here-in some data that may help you trace
back your problems:

At a low(ish) level, printers are generally configured by the file /etc/printcap
('man printcap' should tell you what the contents of the file mean).  Most
commercial installations have printcap set up to run a "magic filter" program on
everything you try to print so that it identifies postscript and passes it to
ghostscript automagically.  The trick is finding out what printer ghostscript is
translating for which you can probably trace by finding the magic filter in
/etc/printcap, reading the man the /usr/doc/ files and any /usr/doc/HOWTO files
for it.  THIS IS THE HARD WAY, but it's fairly universal.

On a recent version of RedHat or Mandrake, you can probably just run the
linuxconf program and use that to set up the printer.

> I have not been able to get my other printer-HP LaserJet 4MV which is in I{X
> mode with a JetDirect port builtin-into the hub, not my lpt port, to be
> recognized. I suspect getting IPX working is a different problem altogether.

I've never managed to make IPX work, that said, I haven't tried very hard.  I
suspect that samba client will be necessary to access the hubs printer port ( I
don't know much about printer ports on hubs, but I expect they'd be set up to
look like a Windows box with a printer attached.


************
techtalk at linuxchix.org   http://www.linuxchix.org