Hi

I am a complete Linux novice, having been a Windows end-user all my working life. Unfortunately, the company I just joined is small, and there isn't anybody within the company who has the background or expertise to deal with this problem, so it's fallen in my lap.

My company has just moved its financial software from an old version of SCO Unix to Linux Mandrake. The main reason was Linux's TCP/IP support (the cost of upgrading SCO Unix to have TCP/IP support was very high.)

The company (a stationery supplier) has a cash sale desk with a terminal that has a printer connected directly to it, and which prints out invoices for cash customers.

However, since moving to Linux, this printer no longer works. There is no IP address for the printer. It seems to be the standard output device for the terminal to which it is attached.

In the financial package (a program called Titan), there is a printer configuration file which refers to this printer as follows:

PRINTER9 -P /usr/bin/prn9

So far, so good. However, I found two versions of the file, prn9. This is the one called /usr/bin/prn9 which the above line refers to:

echo '\033[5i\c'
cat $1
echo '\033[4i\c'

I also found a similar file in a backup directory which reads as follows:

sleep 2
stty ixon opost onlcr ixoff 0<&1
echo '\033[5i\c' >&1
cat $1 >&1
echo '\033[4i\c' >&1
exit 0

Neither of these seem to work anymore.

The Linux expert who handled the conversion from Unix to Linux for us has also tried a program called VTPRINT, but so far without success. He is still researching this program, and seems to be having some difficulty finding out how to use VTPRINT in this sort of situation.

Can anybody shed some light on the above, or offer advice on how to make a terminal send an invoice to its attached printer?

Unfortunately, I don't know what sort of additional info I should have included with this posting, so anybody please tell me what to look for and how to do it, and I'll be grateful.

With thanks,
Grant Botes