8.10 Printing between NT Server/NetWare and FreeBSD.

Up to this point in the chapter, our main concern has been FreeBSD and Windows NT printing interoperability with NT as a print client passing jobs to the FreeBSD system. What happens if the situation is reversed and the FreeBSD system is itself a printing client of another LPD server? This situation can arise in a mixed UNIX/NetWare or UNIX/NT environment. The administrator may elect to forgo the use of Samba, and use an NT server to provide print services. Alternatively, the administrator may have existing DOS Novell IPX clients that they don't want to change, printing to an existing IPX Novell NetWare server. Many of the earlier hardware print servers, such as the Intel NetPort 1 and NetPort 2 were IPX only. A site with a large number of these hardware servers may wish to move the clients to TCP/IP, but leave the existing IPX-based printing network intact.

With NetWare it is possible to load an LPD NetWare loadable module (NLM) on the NetWare server that takes incoming LPR print jobs and prints them on IPX print queues. Later versions of NetWare may include this NLM, it was an extra cost add-on with NetWare 3.X

With Windows NT Server, loading the TCP/IP LPR printing support also loads the LPD print server on NT. By using LPR client programs on UNIX, it is possible to submit, view status, and remove jobs remotely from an NT server that has LPR installed as a port for it's printers.

Following is a sample /etc/printcap file entry that defines a print queue named tank on the FreeBSD system pointed to an NT LPD server queue named sherman on a NT Server named big.army.mil in the DNS. This uses the rm printcap capability. Unlike the earlier examples, the output print jobs are sent out not by the PC parallel port but over the network to the NT server.

    #
    tank|sample remote printer:\
      :rm=big.army.mil:rp=sherman:sd=/var/spool/output/lphost:\
      :lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:
    #