Who should attend: System managers who are faced with managing a wide variety of printers in a distributed and non-homogeneous environment. Participants should be familiar with the basics on UNIX and networking, and the concepts of client-server programming.

What you will learn: An overview of network-based printing, and the various approaches used by UNIX, Novell, and Windows to support printing. We will focus on the problems of supporting a heterogeneous print spooler environment such as BSD, System V, and Windows NT printing.

Topics include:

- Printer interfaces, printer job lanaguages, and page description languages
- Print spooler architecture and functions
- BSD and System V print spooler organization
- Novell and Microsoft print spoolers
- Network protocols--RFC 1179
- Application programs, drivers, and PDL conversion programs
- BSD print spooler

• Organization
• LPRng, BSD 4.4 lpd
• Installation of software
• printcap files
• Filters

• Organization
• Installation
• Configuration

• System V to lpd spooling
• PCNFSD spooling
• Windows WINSOCK client programs

Attendees will gain a better understanding of the problems and solutions when managing a large number of printers with different capabilities. In-depth examples include supporting Windows NT print clients on UNIX systems and vice versa, using LPRng and SAMBA.

Patrick Powell is CEO of AStArt Technologies. He has taught courses in computer networks, operating systems, and real time systems, and is the developer of LPRng, a LPD-compatible print spooler that was created to solve problems with existing LPD implementations. He is active in the IETF Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) working group, which is developing new standards for network printing.

Tutorials at-a-Glance     Tutorial Instructors