Remote spooling; How do *you* submit files to a remote spooler?

[Brandon S. Allbery]

As quoted from <LARRY.90Jan31115055 at focsys.uucp> by larry at focsys.uucp (Larry Williamson):
+---------------
| I suppose I could create a local lp interface program for each remote
| printer and do the rsh in it, but that does not seem like the 'right'
| thing to do.
+---------------

Why not?  It's the solution I use, for both rsh/remsh (rsh with a Wollongong
accent ;-) and uux(!).  It works well and doesn't bypass any necessary lp
spooler protocols.

It might be possible to put the real /usr/spool/lp directory into its own file
system on a single machine, rmount it on the other machines, and make sure
/usr/lib/lpsched is running only on the "master" machine; I haven't and can't
try it.  If it does work, it should be able to print to any printer on any
machine in the network, assuming that the "master" rmount's the "slave"
machines' root directories; simply tell lpadmin that the printer device is
e.g. /r/machine/dev/lp.  Of course, such a configuration contains a potential
loop, which will be resolved by /r/machine/usr/spool/lp/* pathnames being
rejected with EMULTIHOP.  If I ever get my hands on a pair of systems which
are RFS'ed together, I'll probably try this just to see if it works; it would
certainly make network printing easier, although this configuration does break
a few things ("lp" will always use "-c", for example, since the chances of a
file to be printed living in the /usr/spool/lp filesystem are minimal; on the
other hand, I've used a mounted /usr/spool/lp on other systems for other
reasons, and the loss of links didn't cause any major problems).

Reply to me directly, please; the original poster redirected followups to
comp.unix.wizards, which I don't read because it's big and my free time to
read news is relatively small.

++Brandon
-- 
Brandon S. Allbery    allbery at NCoast.ORG, BALLBERY (MCI Mail), ALLBERY (Delphi)
      uunet!cwjcc.cwru.edu!ncoast!allbery ncoast!allbery at cwjcc.cwru.edu