Item Subject: [HP3000-L] SNMP queries for printing?
Robert writes:
> I figured the protocol was rather simple, just accept anything coming
> your way on TCP port 9100, so I coded up a simple daemon to do this,
> making sure I could multihome it for all 8 serial ports, and therefore
> all 8 IP's.

Yes, normally the "JetDirect protocol" is nothing more than raw TCP
to port 9100.  It sounds like you've gone to the trouble to allow
the Linux box to have 8 IP addresses, each with a port 9100 server.
The easier way to do this is to simply use one IP address, and then
use different port numbers.  I believe the 3000 will let you configure
any port numbers you want.  This would eliminate all the multihome
mess and free up your extra IP addresses.

>Now when we try and get the MPE host to print to it, all we get on the
>Linux end (according to our trusty packet dumper, tcpdump) are SNMP
>queries. I've been told that these queries are to check to make sure the
>printer is on, has paper,

is a genuine JetDirect device purchased from HP, :-)

>                           and is otherwise ready to print. Well, that's
>nice and all, but I don't know how to go about responding to these
>queries, and tcpdump isn't quite showing me what the MPE host is looking
>for.

I believe that if you can get the Linux box to respond to the SNMP requests,
then everything will start working perfectly.  I don't know the exact MIB
paths that it's looking for, but a protocol analyzer, or perhaps the
JetDirect documentation should easily clear this up.

>Also my coworkers (who have all already said I'm SOL, not to mention
>crazy) have been telling me e-spool could be a way out of this. Not having
>heard of e-spool before, I'm curious - does it do LPR/LPD nicely?
>Opinions?

There are several packages for the 3000 that support both raw JetDirect
style printing and LPR/LPD.  I'm partial to NBspool from Quest myself,
but e-spool and one or two others will work fine too.  I don't think
there is a free LPR client for the 3000 yet.  The tricky thing about
implementing LPR is that you have to know before you start sending
any data exactly how many bytes will be sent.  On MPE this means
you have to preprocess the spoolfile completely before you can start
sending the data out.

Good luck,

G.