Managing Systems and Workgroups: A Guide for HP-UX System Administrators

Planning a Workgroup
Planning your Printer Configuration
Chapter 2108
Remote Spooling You can also send print requests to a printer
configured on a remote system, using remote spooling. When you use
remote spooling, a shell script (“pump”) sends data to a remote system
via the rlp command.
A remote spooling program called rlpdaemon, running on the remote
system, receives data and directs it into the remote system’s LP spooler.
The rlpdaemon also runs on your local system to receive requests from
remote systems. Remote spooling is carried out by communication
between the local spooler and the remote spooler.
If some of your systems have printers configured and others do not, but
all systems are networked by a LAN, you can have the systems share use
of available printers. To do so, set up the LP spoolers of the systems
lacking printers to automatically send print jobs via LAN to the LP
spooler of the system equipped with the printer. The rlpdaemon program
runs in the background of the printer’s system, monitoring the incoming
LAN traffic for any remote print requests from other systems. When
these requests arrive, the rlpdaemon submits them to its local LP
spooler on behalf of the remote user.
In addition to handling remote print requests, rlpdaemon handles cancel
and status requests from remote systems, using special interface scripts
much like printer interface scripts. When you set up a remote spooling
printer,
• The cancel model file (/usr/spool/lp/cmodel/rcmodel) and status
model file (/usr/spool/lp/smodel/rsmodel) are copied to interface
directories (/usr/spool/lp/cinterface and
/usr/spool/lp/sinterface, respectively)
• And renamed with the printer name.
Configuring a remote printer into your LP spooler requires that you
supply the following additional information beyond what you supply to
configure a local printer:
• name of the system with the printer
• interface script to use when issuing a remote cancel request
• interface script to use when issuing a remote status request
• printer name, as defined in the LP spooler of the remote system
To configure remote spooling, see “Adding a Remote Printer to the LP
Spooler” on page 436.