Setting General Properties for a Printer (Shared Printer Queue)

Use the General tab of a printer’s Properties sheet to perform the following tasks:

Set or change the comment or location settings of the shared printer queue.

Change the driver that the printer uses.

The comment text is useful for indicating the print device location to Windows NT clients who are browsing for a printer. You can install a new printer driver using the New Driver button.

Use the Advanced Server net print command to create separator pages and to use print processor scripts.

Using Separator Pages

Advanced Server prints a separator page or banner automatically before each print job. You can alter the default banner page and create one more appropriate to your needs.

To set or change a separator page, use the net print command. For more information, type net help print at the Advanced Server command prompt.

Using a Print Processor Script

A print processor script can send print jobs directly to a file or terminal instead of to a printer, or to a remote UNIX system computer via the uucp command, or to another UNIX system process, such as troff or nroff.

When you create a print processor script, you must share a queue that uses it to allow users to access it. Users access this queue as they would any other print queue.

A print processor script is a UNIX system executable file. It should conform to the following guidelines. To avoid affecting service to other users, execute scripts in the background.

The following environment variables are set and can be incorporated into your print processor scripts:

Variable	Description
$CLIENT	The computer name from which the job was sent.
$COPIES	The number of copies to be printed (1 and above).
$PRIO	The UNIX system LP priority of the print job (1 to 39).
$DEST	The UNIX system LP printer class (server queue) to which the job was sent.
$FILENAME	The full path name of the file to be processed.

To create a print processor script, use a text editor, such as vi, to create a shell script. Make the script executable by using the chmod +x command. Save the script in the server’s lanman/customs directory and be sure to share the printer queue that will use the script. Then, use the net print command to tell the shared printer queue to use the print processor script.

For more information, type net help print at the Advanced Server command prompt.