Reserved Printers

A reserved printer is a printer to which only D3 can print. A printer can be attached to a serial or parallel port and reserved for a D3 virtual machine. Reserved printers are managed by the D3 spooler which submits jobs to D3 printer processes serving specified form queues. A reserved printer can be defined and started in a user-defined macro called user-coldstart in the dm account. This macro is used automatically during a coldstart or the normal boot process.

Adding a Reserved Printer

Complete these instructions to add a reserved printer.

Parallel Port

When starting the system, the parallel printer must be online. See the User Guide to locate the parallel port on the back of the system if necessary.

  1. Log on to D3. Enter user-ID dm and master dictionary dm.

  2. Select an unused D3 line number on which to start the printer. In the example below, for a 128 user system, the last line number (127) is used.

  3. Insert the statements below in the user-coldstart macro in the master dictionary of the dm account.

  4. !exec d3 -127 -t lp0 -pprinter &

    startptr 0,0,0,s127

     

    NOTE

    If no items have been previously placed in the user-coldstart, it opens as a new item.

    In this example, the Linux parallel printer device name is /dev/lp0.

    NOTE

    The options to the TCL startptr command, such as the form queue number, printer number, and so on may vary.

Serial Port

  1. Log on to D3, then enter user-ID dm and master dictionary dm.

  2. Select any unused D3 line number on which to start the printer.

  3. In the example below, for a 128 user system, the last line number (127) is used.

  4. Insert the statements below in the user-coldstart macro in the master dictionary of the dm account.

  5. Note that the options to the startptr TCL command, such as the form queue number, printer number, and so on may vary.

    !exec d3 -127 -t ttyxx  -y "9600" -printer &

    startptr 0,0,0,s127

    These statements define a serial printer on line 127 that is associated with /dev/ttyxx with a baud rate of 9600 (the default).

Removing a Reserved Printer

The D3 command sp-kill returns the serial (or parallel) port to a user process state. To allow UNIX to use the printer attached to this port, the D3 process using it must be killed. To kill the process:

  1. Log on to D3 and enter user-ID dm and master dictionary dm.

  2. Type:

  3. sp-kill dprinter.number

    kill pport.number

    These commands kill the UNIX process associated to the printer on port port.number.

See Also

Printers

D3 Printers

Shared Printers