[H-GEN] Re: [SAGE-AU] apple-talk routing troubles; printing from a PC using Netatalk's papd

[Laurence J. Rietberg]

Hi,

At 12:23  2/10/98 +1000, I wrote:
>I used to have a Webster Multigate router that provided routing information
>(i.e., atalk zone) for some Macs and other strictly atalk devices on our
>subnet.  I have since removed that, and would like our Linux box (running
>RH Linux 5.1 [Manhattan], kernel v. 2.1.117) to take the place of this
>router via Netatalk.
<snip>

Thankyou to all those who replied to my request for advice.  To configure
atalk from my linux box, I really need an atalk interface (i.e., in
addition to eth0), which means installing another NIC(?) on the Linux box.
Instead, I am better off relying upon some other routing device.

As it turns out, my zone information was seeded by the Multigate I 
took off-line, though this should not have prevented me (in theory) from
seeing the atalk printer on the default zone that is given when atalkd is
started.
(Perhaps I should try turning the printer off and then on to see if that
causes it to show up in the Chooser.)

Anyhow, at present I decided to try to fire the router up again, and I
managed to boot it (using megan, and a pre-configured zone-info file that
is accessed via anonymous ftp by megan as it boots).  So now I have all my
zones back, and I can see the atalk outside world, and I can see the atalk
printer from the chooser!

=========================================================
Problems using an atalk printer using papd, setting up a lpd queue so that
the PC can see it and use it...

Since fixing my Mac-woes wrt seeing the atalk printer, I have been able to
configure and print to an appletalk printer from a PC, by
setting up a lpd printcap entry on my Linux box, and using psf input and
output filters (ifpap and ofpap) [provided with atalk in netatalk], and
keeping the name of the printer in /etc/printcap the same as the name that
is known in the atalk zone (i.e., as retrieved with nbplkup) [i.e., I
wasn't able to get .paprc to work...]

I have a couple of problems here though.  

Firstly, I can't print ascii files
too well from the command line (the left-most characters are chopped
off), and when I print from a Win95 box, it seems to print okay, but then
a blank page comes out followed by 
"offending command" on a second page.  

...sounds like a problem with the psf filter used by pap.

ps. if I send a file to pap directly; i.e., with

$ pap -p <atalk printer name> <file to print>

it connects to the printer okay, but then aborts, as it tries to read the
lines in <file to print>.  All this tells me is that pap needs the file to
be filtered first.

But all would be okay if I can 
stop the extra 2 pages coming out of the printer after the printjob is
complete [i.e., the blank page followed by the one with the "offending
command" message on it] when I print from a Win box.

N.B. in properties of the atalk printer on a Win95 box, under the
comments, there's a network message that won't go away either, though I
don't know if it's related to the filtering:

"warning: unable to get official name for remote machine"

(The latter looks to be b/c .paprc is not set up right, but I'm managed to
kludge around it by making the /etc/printcap entry printer name the same
name as the printer name in our atalk zone(?))

Your ideas on my specific problems to do with printing via papd would be
greatly appreciated.

Yours sincerely,
Laurence