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From: Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us>
Subject: Re: Telnet printing Message-ID: <odog10pq7dl9ha1q2cht2292et1j2haenm@4ax.com> References: <LNWdnfBPhsoFm4XdRVn-sA@thebiz.net>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 2004 01:47:33 GMT

On Wed, 28 Jan 2004 13:59:30 -0500, "Robert Bachellor"
<rob@alphaomegas.com> wrote:

>We have a remote client using DSL with dynamic IP addressing to telnet back
>into the SCO OS5 server.  He is using ICE.TCP Pro which comes with an LPD
>program for Windows.  My problem is how to define a printer on the server so
>that his reports go to his LPD interface so he can print them.

Back in the bad old days of Unix (before VPN's), I had a similar
problem.  IP addresses were assigned on the fly by a DHCP server.  I
only had a maximum of 10 such dynamic IP's in the pool so I created 10
printers.  I was sorta forced to use LPR/LPD because it was the most
common protocol available in a scrambled mess of operating systems and
print server boxes.  There were some dialin users, so static DHCP by
MAC address was not an option.  The customer did not want to deal with
a DNS server.  Everyone logged into the order system with the same
login (not my idea), so I couldn't assign printers by login name.

I named the printers by appending the last part of the IP address to a
generic name.  For example:
  192.168.0.100  =  printer100
  192.168.0.101  =  printer101
  (...)
  192.168.0.110  =  printer110

On login, I extracted the DHCP assigned IP address using something
like:
  IP=`who -mx | awk '{print $6}'`
I then peeled off the last 3 digits with:
  NUMB=`who -mx | awk '{print $6}' | cut -c 10-`
Finally, I assigned the default printer environment variable LPDEST to
the proper printer number with something like:
  LPDEST="printer"$NUMB ; export $LPDEST

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About 2 years later, I discovered VPN's, disarmed this abomination,
removed the print server daemons from the client machines, simplified
my life, and lived happily ever after.

-- 
# Jeff Liebermann   150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831.336.2558 voice    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
#                           jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
# 831.421.6491 digital_pager  jeffl@cruzio.com     AE6KS

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