rprint - print on remote sites via UUCP

[D'Arcy J.M. Cain]

The following is a model file which implements remote printing using UUCP.
This was tested under SV3.2 but should work under systems that use a similar
print spooler system.  The idea is to print using standard print semantics.
For example if you have a file that you want to print you might say:
    pr file_name | lp -d laser
where laser is a laser printer on a remote system.  The file will be
compressed if it is not already so (you must change etc/magic to recognize
compressed files - see comments) and sent with a uux command to the remote
site.  Once you install a printer with lpadmin, you can change the name of
the site and the printer at that site by modifying a local file called
remote_mach.  Please let me have your comments on this script.  If you
make mods to enhance it or allow it to work on other systems please pass
them back so I can try to include them in my copy.

Thanks to Greg Woods (woods at eci386) for the original script and additional
suggestions when reposting this.

---------------------------- start of rprint.sh ---------------------------
#!/bin/sh
#
#	rprint.sh - transparent lp interface for a remote printer with compress
#
# Author: Greg A. Woods <woods at eci386>, <woods at robohack>
# Mods:   D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.UUCP>
#

PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/lbin:/usr/local/bin ; export PATH

PRINTER=`basename $0`
ID=$1
USER=$2
TITLE=$3
COPIES=$4
OPTIONS=$5
#
# NOTE, some lp's (notably the one on 3B1's) have 6 options
#
shift; shift; shift; shift; shift
files="$@"

# remote_mach contains a list of printers (as per the lp configuration)
# with the remote machine and the printer name on the remote machine.
# If the last entry is missing then the default printer on the remote
# system is used instead.
#
# Sample remote_mach file:
# |   |-----------------------------------------------------------|   |
# | o | # List of remote printers                                 | o |
# |   |                                                           |   |
# | o | # printer bill is on system saint at Bill Jones' desk     | o |
# |   | bill saint lpr5                                           |   |
# | o |                                                           | o |
# |   | # we also want to print on saint's default printer        |   |
# | o | saint saint                                               | o |
# |   |                                                           |   |
# | o | # the next one is for the laser on system foo             | o |
# |   | foo-l foo laser                                           |   |
# | o |-----------------------------------------------------------| o |
#
# mktable is in /usr/lbin on most SysV's, and strips comments and blank
# lines while concatenating it's input.
#
MACHINE=`mktable /usr/spool/lp/remote_mach | awk '$1~/^'$PRINTER'$/ {
	if (NF == 1) { print "ERROR" }
	else { print $2 }
}'`

if [ -z "$MACHINE" ]
then
	MACHINE=NOTFOUND
fi

RPRINTER=`mktable /usr/spool/lp/remote_mach | awk '$1~/^'$PRINTER'$/ {
	if (NF > 2) { printf "-d%s", $3 }}'`

# Logging - don't bother recording remote printer name
#
# echo "`date +%D-%T`:$PRINTER:$MACHINE:$RAW:-t$TITLE:-o$OPTIONS:-n$COPIES:$files" >> /usr/spool/lp/remlog

# NOTE: uux "sees" single quotes.  You must not put them anywhere where
# white space is not allowed (i.e. -t'$TITLE'), as uux will introduce
# a space before the first single quote, and after the ending single
# quote, if there is not already whitespace in these places.
#
# Note also the use of '-C' and '-c' to ensure the data makes the hop!
#
# This version requires "COMMANDS=[...:]lp:uncompress" in the remote
# Permissions file.
#                    *** NOTE SECURITY ISSUE *** 
# One security issue of note is that if you give remote 'lp' execute
# permission, or worse yet remote 'uncompress' or 'zcat' execute
# permission, you can't very easily prevent the remote user from
# exploiting *any* of your printers, except through obscurity (i.e.
# don't let the remote user login and run lpstat or look in
# /usr/spool/lp!).  You may be able to hack this to fix this.  In
# the environment I was using it this wasn't a problem.

for F in $files ; do
	FZ=/tmp/`basename $F`.Z

# D'Arcy J.M. Cain <darcy at druid.UUCP> added the following code to check
# for compressed files and compress them if they weren't already so.  The
# file is always compressed before sending.

# The following test requires that file(1) recognize a compressed file.
# I had to add a line to /etc/magic to allow it to do this.  The -i
# option to grep is to allow some flexibility if you already have a
# line in /etc/magic and it uses different case.  I assume that it will
# have the word compress somewhere in the line at least.

# BTW: the first 2 bytes in a compressed file are 0x1f and 0x9d.  How
# you read this depends on the endianness of your processor but the
# following lines works on my 386 with Esix.
#    "0   short   0x9d1f     Compressed file"
	if [ -z "`file $F | grep -i compress`" ]
	then
		compress < $F > $FZ
	else
		cp $F $FZ
	fi

	uux -C "$MACHINE!uncompress < !$FZ | lp -c $RPRINTER '-t$TITLE' '-o$OPTIONS' -n$COPIES"
	rm -f $FZ
done

ret=$?
if [ "$ret" -ne 0 ]
	then disable -r "uux -n -C \"$MACHINE!lp [...] \" failed." $PRINTER
fi

# I'm not sure if lp will see this, but we've already disabled the printer
#
exit $ret
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

-- 
D'Arcy J.M. Cain (darcy at druid)     |
D'Arcy Cain Consulting             |   There's no government
Toronto, Ontario, Canada           |   like no government!
+1 416 424 2871                    |