S/390 PartnerWorld for Developers, ITSO/EFS Project EFS Systems on a Linux Base: Additional Topics

80 EFS Systems on a Linux Base: Additional Topics

and converts the data to ASCII. In our FLEX-ES resources definition, we specified a fixed

Linux file name, /tmp/print.out, as the destination for the 1403 at address 00E.

The 1403 emulation program accepts whatever data is written to the 1403 and adds it to the

Linux output file. There may be many z/OS jobs in the file, with the separator pages

generated by JES2. The emulation program cannot detect z/OS job boundaries, although

some crude filtering is possible based on the content of JES2 separator pages. This output

file will grow indefinitely until you clear it.

We created the shPRT shell script. This shell script sends printer control characters and the

print data to the lpr command. The lpr command, in turn, sends the data to a Linux print

queue where it is handled by the print daemon. The result is output that looks very much like

line-mode output from a 38xx printer.

6.4.2 Implementation

There are a number of steps required to implement this process. These include:

򐂰 Connect an appropriate printer to the server and Linux

򐂰 Define a Linux raw print queue

򐂰 Create the shPRT shell script

򐂰 Define a 1403 printer in the FLEX-ES resources

򐂰 Define a 1403 printer for JES2, if not already done

򐂰 Understand the operational steps needed to use this process

Printer and print queue

We simply connected our Lexmark Optra L printer (with the duplex feature) to the parallel port

on our EFS system and rebooted the system. If the printer had not been connected before,

Linux offers to configure it for you. After doing this, we then used a Red Hat tool (under gnome

in RH 8.0 it is found with System Settings-->Printing) to configure a print queue. In this tool:

򐂰 Select New (followed by forward to move through the panels).

򐂰 Select a local printer and define the queue name as

rawprint (this is an arbitrary name).

򐂰 The device is /dev/lp0 (and our Linux automatically detected the Lexmark printer).

򐂰 Select the print driver as Raw Print Queue. (Do not select any of the specific printer

names.)

򐂰 Select the Apply option. This should restart the lpd daemon.

򐂰 Exit from the printer configuration tool.

Shell script

We created our shPRT shell script in the /usr/flexes/rundir directory where we keep all our

FLEX-ES operational files. The shell script contains:

CTL=”\033\105\033\050\163\060\160\061\066\056\066\067\150\070\056\166

\060\163\060\142\124\033\046\154\061\157\061\163\065\056\064\143

\055\061\060\060\060\132”

CTL2=”\014\033\105”

(/bin/echo -ne $CTL; cat /tmp/print.out; /bin/echo -ne $CTL2) | lpr -P rawprint

echo ‘Sent to print queue - Remember to “load 00E” ‘

The CTL and CTL2 constants are printer control characters, written in octal.

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The octal

format was the most convenient for use in a shell script. If you have good script writing skills

you can do this many different ways. The particular control characters shown here are for the

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CTL is shown as three lines here, but it is actually created as one long line containing 38 octal constants.