Connecting to a Netware 3.1x server

The first thing you will have to do is make sure the following are built into your kernel (or as loadable modules):

• Under Networking Options - IPX Support
• Under Filesystems - NCP Support

Once these are built, and loaded (if they're dynamicly loadable moduels), the next step is to configure the interface. I've been able to do this via the ipx_configure utility. I ran it twice as follows (as root of course):

[root@warhammer mnt]# ipx_configure --auto_interface=on
[root@warhammer mnt]# ipx_configure --auto_primary=on

Next, optionaly, you can createa a .nwclient file in your home directory. Make sure you set the permissions to 600, or the tools will ignore it. My file looks like this:

NWSERVER/username password

If you put your password in the file, the tools will pick it up. You can test your connection by getting a list of users on the netware server:

[username@warhammer mnt]# nwuserlist -S NWSERVER

[root@warhammer mnt]# ncpmount -S NWSERVER /mnt/nwserver

Thats it! You should now be able to do all the stuff that you have permissions to do on the Netware Server. One thing to keep in mind is that it mounts the whole server, and you'll see everything that you have permissions to see. The top level directory will contain a volume listing, it's a little weird if you're used to having drives mapped, but it's better once you get used to it.

Printing to a Netware 3.1x Print Queue

I'm assuming that you figured out how to connect to the Netware Server that has the print queue you're trying to print to before you attempt it. Actualy this is pretty straght forward once the connection has been made.

Get a list of print queues from the server:

[username@warhammer docs]$ pqlist -S NWSERVER

and single out the one you're interested in using. The utility you can use to send stuff to the print queue is nwprint. Try printing a test page, any old text file should do...

[username@warhammer docs]$ nprint -S INFOSYS -q PRINT_QUEUE -N babelfish.txt

Now, text files aren't very interesting, and where I work, we have some pretty good HP printers, but alas, we have no Post Script support on them. Most of the thing that can print under linux support Post Script output (and the ability to spool to a file). Thankfuly, Linux (at least RedHat does) comes with a plethora of conversion utilities. The one I've had the best experience with is GhostScript. I also tried convert, and GhostView, but they dind't exactly give me nice looking documents -- convert had bad fonts, and cropped the page, GhostView ended up with very nice fonts, but every page after the first was shifted down and lost the last inch or so of what was to be printed.

I used GhostScript to convert a post script file into laserjet format with the following:

[username@warhammer spool]$ gs -sDEVICE=laserjet -sOutputFile=stuff.laserjet.%d stuff.ps

GhostScript is interactive (and I don't really know how to use it), and I just hit enter once for each page in the document, and it spit out a file for each page. I then used the nprint command to print each one of these files seporately.

Beyond what I've just explained, I have no further knowledge or experience. Best of luck!

Ok, now I've got little shell programs that can be used in place of lpr. I use prn.ps in the print dialog of Netscape, and I get output from Netscape straight to the printer! You would run them like this:

[mortis@malevolence mortis]$ cat temp.txt | prn.txt

I don't have them set up to do either cmdline args or stdin yet...just have to get around to it.