Hmmm... that's an interesting tidbit! It works when done
manually...
Yes, even when it's all combined into a long commandline.
lp5250d uses the popen() API to launch the output command.
You might try "man popen" to see if there are any caveats on
your particular system... On my system (which is FreeBSD, not
Linux) the man page says that popen will start a new /bin/sh
shell and pass the command to it via
the -c switch. Therefore, whatever command-line you code has to be
compatible with /bin/sh. But, of course, I don't know if
your system works the same.
My distrbution, Ubuntu 7.04, didn't have a man page for popen but Google
searches showed that most Linux versions of popen are the same as what
you mentioned. Ubuntu 7.04 uses dash instead of bash but I changed that
last week and it didn't make any difference so I changed it back to
dash.
Also, depending on how lp5250d is invoked, it may not have
the same PATH that you have. This might contribute to the
problem... maybe it's not finding something that it needs?
Perhaps the easiest fix is to write a shell script that runs
all of the
steps, then invoke the shell script from the .tn5250rc file?
That way,
you can use #! at the top of the script to control which
shell it runs under, you can insert extra diagnostics into it
(such as logging the PATH it uses, logging errors, etc, to a
file in /tmp or something like
that) and you can even set the PATH to be used... Then test it from
the command-line as well as from lp5250d, and hopefully get
everything working.
It also makes it easier to code additional printers, since
you don't have to repeat the whole (rather complex)
command-line, you can just run the script.
That is probably what I will end up doing. I had some ideas on how I
want to accompish my formatting and printing but haven't have enough
time to work on it.
Okay, here's a bit of background.
A bit of background? That's an understatement!! :0 Thank you so much
for taking so much of your time to explain these things. I am familiar
with some of the topics from having read an IBM document on AS/400
printing but your explanation summed it all up so well that I actually
now understand some of the things that I wasn't clear on before.
Thanks!!
In the 8 years that I have been with this organization, we have gone
from the 570, to the 720 and now the i5 running V5R3M0. I've never had
the opportunity to be involved with administration of our iSeries until
my promotion about a year ago. Unfortunately, since that promotion I
have not had any free time to learn the system. :(
As most of our printers are HP Laserjets, (we just recently
decommissioned our one and only IPDS printer, the InfoPrint 20) we had
been using HPT in Client Access on a Windows server for serving about 30
different printers for various departments. Since Client Access labeled
each print session as A-Z that meant we had to run these sessions on two
different servers to accommodate the total of 30. I've combined that,
easily, onto one dedicated Linux server.
The problem, for me, with HPT is that many times the emulation would not
result in a correctly formatted printout despite trying different models
of HP IBMMFRTYPMDL printers. I haven't had time to learn how to modify
or create a WSCST file to get the printout as I want so that is why I'm
attempting to do those things with Linux. Also, all our print output is
SCS from a single application, although many different modules of that
application, without any graphics. Whenever I learn more about
modifying print devices for use with HPT I will probably understand why
you consider it to be the best way to print from the iSeries.
Anyway, hope this description is useful.
You have no idea just how much clearer you have made my understanding of
the i5 print process. I can't express enough my gratitude for you
taking so much time to help. I look forward to using what I have
learned to make our i5 printouts the way we want them to be and trying
to do some Linux scripting to accomplish that goal. Maybe the solution
to my problem will be of benefit to someone else on the list in the
future.
Warmest regards,
Mitch
midrange.com
