Printing from new PC without LPT/Serial port to Dot Matrix Printer on Smb Share

[Kevin J. Cummings]

On 10/03/2011 03:11 PM, Sanjay Arora wrote:
> 
> lp would print a file to the named printer. How do I print or redirect the
> console output to the printer as is the case in "ls -lha > prn"
> 
> And moreover a legacy program is printing to a device lpt1, had the port
> existed & been connected/redirected to some printer....it would have
> printed.
> 
> Problem here is that there is no connection between the print output of the
> software and the lpd/lpr/cups/smb device. The software is NOT modified to
> recognize the lpr/cups device and therefore is printing to a lpt1 port, as
> all DOS legacy programs do. What I need to do is somehow capture the output
> to the lpt1 device & redirect it to the printer setup on linux.

prn, lpt1, lpt2, etc are WINDOWS device names.  To print to local
connected printers in unix/linux you can pipe output to lp directly:

ls -lha | lp

or you can send directly to the physical port

ls -lha > /dev/lp0

but that kinda defeats the purpose of having a printer driver, doesn't it?

> Is it possible to create a directory named lpt1 in /dev and make it behave
> like a device (whatever behaving like a device is), so that the program
> output written to it can be redirected to the the linux printer?
> 
> With best regards.
> Sanjay.
> 
> 
> 
> 


-- 
Kevin J. Cummings
kjchome at verizon.net
cummings at kjchome.homeip.net
cummings at kjc386.framingham.ma.us
Registered Linux User #1232 (http://www.xlinuxcounter.net/)