Subject: [netatalk-admins] freebsd, netatalk, odd printing problem

From: Josh Fryman <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1998 00:11:32 -0400

hello all,

i was cut off from my connection in the middle of that last email, so
let me finih what i was writing ...

what we have:

free bsd 2.2.6 - stable, netatalk (no asun) 1.4b2, samba 1.9.18p8, mixed
	MacOS environment 7.6-8.1, mixed Win 9x environment ...

what we're getting:

on an hp designjet 2000 with a win95 host interface running miramar's
appletalk stack for win 95, and running the lightbridge rip server ...
when we submit jobs, most of the time the incoming name is garbage.  that
is, it's renamed to "miramar.ps.x" where X is the current job #.  sometimes
we get a nice name across, like "cat_poster_cj45.tif" or some such, but
the far-more-often case is the "miramar..." name.  secondly, we get many
copies (generally about 5) of EACH print job, regardless of whether it comes
from the mac or pc systems.  more interestingly, we note that in the lpd
logs, we get msgs from pap (we're running vanilla papd.conf -- ppd's,
.paprc, the usual -- and printcap is the normal ofpap/tfpap/ifpap sym
links for netatalk) about "Bad response" -- which isn't too useful.  now,
lpd resends the job, obviously, for reasons we assume relate to pap 
returning bad-response exit code ?? ... this is amusing because if we run
pap on the command line, to the very same printer with the very same file,
we get the "bad-response" msg but we do actually receive one valid copy of the
file at the hp rip station.  go figure.  any ideas on this ?

second problem.  this one is another baffling issue.  we have a quadra 700
running agfa viper with an agfa proset 9400 image setting connected.  this
unit has never caused any problems ... until about two weeks ago.  we did a 
switch from RedHat to FreeBSD for disk controller reasons (better support),
and the entire network runs like a champ.  but this silly agfa system keeps
mirroring the print jobs.  this is the ONLY printer that does it -- none 
of the others do.  (canon cyclone, splash dc 40, xerox docutech, qms 2060,
hp designjet 2000 -- all work fine ... the agfa, it mirrors every job.)
the truly weird part is this:

if you bypass the unix spooling (10mbit printer; 100mbit network; we use
the freebsd as an intermediary spooler since the jobs are usually > 100MB)
and print directly to the printer, it still comes out mirrored.  if you
open the source file on the freebsd server, print to a file on your local
desktop, hand-carry the file to the agfa server, it comes out mirrored.
BUT, IF you copy the file from the server, to the local machine, then
print to a local file, and hand-carry the output to the agfa ... it comes out
fine.  this is ... baffling ... to say the least.  no other printers give us
problems except the hp2000 as noted above ... and that's just a conflict in
protocol, i think.  we've double checked our PPDs, but when we found that just
printing through the network was causing problems, well, it just doesnt'
make sense.

any ideas ? opinions ? help !

thanks for your time everyone ...

-josh
[email-masked]