Re: [NTLK] I can't get netatalk talking - Oh yes I can...!

From: Karel Jansens (kareljansens_at_tiscalinet.be)
Date: Thu Mar 14 2002 - 10:25:03 EST


On Thursday 14 March 2002 16:05, you wrote:
> Karel Jansens wrote:
> > Ladies and gentlemen,
> >
> > It gives me great pleasure to announce that I can now use the capacities
> > of my LaserJet 4 to the full, using Linux and Ghostscript as my
> > middlemen.
> >
> > Nice 600 dpi PostScript printouts are positively streaming from my Newt
> > and amaze both friend and foe.
>
> Congrats. I remeber the "fun" doing this on my old NetBSD system (only
> to a Canon BJC6000... Color PS is kind of fun from the Mac :-). Not easy.
>
> What did you have to do to get Ghostscript to work as a filter for lp
> (or is this CUPS?)?

This is all SuSE's YaST ("Yet another Setup Tool") doing I'm afraid. IMHO,
SuSE is one of the best distributions for setting up printers - as long as
you stick to YaST, that is. It even beats Mandrake in this respect.

> > The trick was a minor change to my /etc/atalk/papd.conf file:
> > the line which read
> >
> > :pr=|/usr/bin/lpr -Plp:\
> >
> > should have been
> >
> > :pr=|/usr/bin/lpr:\
> >
> > which sends the spool to the default printer (and in my case, the only
> > one). It seems that SuSE 7.2 does not install a Plp-queue (which, funnily
> > enough, S.u.S.E. 5.3 did by default).
>
> I thought that the '-P' parameter said what printer to print to. In this
> case, it seems more like lpr would not just default to the 'lp' queue.

Yes, my mistake. I should have said: "...does not install a lp-queue...".
There isn't one. In version 5.3, lp was a link to the default printer.

>
> > If there is anybody else with a SuSE box struggling with ethernet
> > printing (but I cannot imagine that there would be another living soul as
> > stupid as me), I'll be glad to give some pointers.
> >
> > One problem remains, and I cannot explain it:
> >
> > although netatalk announces itself as starting and running in the
> > background at bootup, I still have to activate it manually from a console
> > (or X-term) with the command
> >
> > /etc/rc.d/atalk start
> >
> > followed by _at_least_ five instances of
> >
> > nbpklup
> >
> > before all the netatalk services (AFPServer, netatalk, Workstation and
> > LaserWriter) announce their presence. Probably simply waiting for a
> > minute or so would have yielded the same result, but by now it should be
> > well understood that sitting still patiently is not one of my skills.
> >
> > I can live with that, but I'm not sure if this does not bode further doom
> > down the road.
>
> I wouldn't worry about it. This seems like the same behavior I've seen
> on every other platform where I've run Netatalk. I suspect that it has
> something to do with the way an AppleTalk network does network discovery.

I've got all sorts of replies to the nbplkup command: from nothing, over
"nbp_lookup: Cannot assign requested address" and partial services startup.

Maybe an Appletalk network is like an old Diesel: It'll start up eventually,
but you have to crank it till the battery is almost dead...

> > I would like to add one last comment about the Newton and Linux
> > mini-howto: the faq advises to reboot after every change to the config
> > files of netatalk, but I found that, on my box at least, a simple
> >
> > /etc/rc.d/atalk restart
> >
> > would do just fine. Maybe this advise is for older kernels. As usual,
> > YMMV.
>
> I can't speak for older Linux kernels, but I've run various versions of
> netatalk on Solaris (2.5.1?) and NetBSD. Depending on the platform, you
> *can't* restart netatalk. If you do, you'll end up having to reboot
> since the kernel will panic. (At least it used to on older versions of
> Solaris.)

I had a panick the very first time I did the restart thing, but in all
fairness, at that moment the netatalk config files were so scr*wed up that
just about _anything_ might have happened. Since then I've done the start,
restart and even stop routine many times over without so much as a hickup
(this is kernel 2.4.4).

-- 
Karel Jansens
kareljansens_at_tiscalinet.be

"We're here to kick ass and chew bubble gum, and we're all out of gum." (Dr. Zulu of Team Diotoir on Robot Wars Extreme)

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