Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!security!genrad!grkermit!masscomp!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!WMartin@office-3 From: WMartin%office-3@sri-unix.UUCP Newsgroups: net.unix Subject: Attaching a printer to a 68000 UNIX system Message-ID: <14480@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Fri, 9-Dec-83 15:01:00 EST Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.14480 Posted: Fri Dec 9 15:01:00 1983 Date-Received: Tue, 13-Dec-83 05:49:28 EST Lines: 81 From: Will Martin Hi! This will probably be perceived by any UNIX wizards out there as a very dumb group of questions. I guess my main problem here is not knowing where to look for printed or on-line documentation that answers my inquiry, so pointers to such will be appreciated. (My other problem is that the person I am most likely to ask about this is on vacation...) Anywho, the situation is as follows: We have a CCI Power-5 68000-based machine here, with 16 ports plus console port, which runs PERPOS, a UNIX look-alike devised by CCI, and on which we run the Office Power office automation software package. Hooked to this machine are 16 CCI terminals (made by Zentec) [including the console] and one system printer (currently a NEC Spinwriter 5510). The other day, merrily thrashing about as "root" with insufficient knowledge of what I was doing, I munged up the etc/ttys file. I restored it to what I thought was the correct form, re-wrote it out, and we tried printing something on the system printer. It worked fine. Then today, for another reason, we brought the system down and back up again. At that time, a "login:" prompt appeared on the printer, and no print jobs would print out. The printer is connected to port #7, which translates (according to doing an ls -l dev/tty*) to tty09. I had set the tty09 line in etc/ttys to "19tty09", which means, according to our documentation, "on-line, 1200 bps" for tty09. I could do an "echo test > dev/tty09" and see "test" print out on the printer. I hadn't figured out what "tty01" was connected to, and I had set it at "1itty01" (on-line, 19,200bps), which is the same as the ordinary terminal settings. I think this was my problem. We finally looked at a different system and saw that the etc/ttys file had 01 set to "07tty01". Also, instead of being set to "on-line", their printer port was set to "09tty09". We changed ours the same way, brought the system down and back up, and now could print OK. So we know how to get it to work; we don't know why what we did fixed it. I guess my questions are: 1) Since the printer worked OK AFTER I messed up etc/ttys and before we took the system down, but not afterwards, does this mean that etc/ttys is only looked at when the system comes up? This doesn't seem to agree with the behavior of using etc/ttys to bring a terminal online or take it off, which is done without affecting the rest of the system. 2) Is tty01 the "real" printer line, to which the software writes and then this is somehow translated to the line the printer device is physically connected to (in this case tty09)? If so, what makes the tty01 > tty09 connection? It looks like we could have plugged the printer into any port; somehow we have to tell the system which it is, but I haven't found out how that is done. 3) Does the physical printer tty line have to be shown in etc/ttys as "offline", as in our "09tty09", and then some background software overrides this to make it really online? 4) Where is this stuff described? The UNIX manual talks about lpr and various related commands, but nothing about the initial setup of the hardware configuration, and the software commands to implement it. (There is no "man" database on this system, by the way, so I couldn't get info there.) 5) What does the "7" in "07tty01" mean? (We have limited documentation that only mentions "9", "d", and "i" in that field.) Thanks for wading through all this... Regards, Will Martin PS - Please send any replies to BOTH "WMARTIN@OFFICE-3" and "WMARTIN@SIMTEL20". Usenet people can send to brl-bmd!wmartin.