Lukas Beeler's IT Blog

ExcelliPrint is an IPDS to PCL converter that runs on Windows, and is mostly implemented in Java. It’s an excellent alternative to IPDS Dimms (because you can use it with any PCL capable printer), and it isn’t printer specific. The price of ExcelliPrint is quite hefty, but anyone using a System i is used to such pricing.

ExcelliPrint uses a web interface for administration, that is secured by it’s own username and password. Why they didn’t use Windows Integrated Authentication is beyond me, but let’s assume you’ve lost your ExcelliPrint Password. There is no official procedure to reset your password, and reinstalling the application and creating a new configuration is just very cumbersome.

ExcelliPrint uses a SQLite database as it’s config backend, in a file called config.db located in %ProgramFiles%\Brooks Internet Software\ExcelliPrint. We can modify this database by using freely available open source tools.

Here’s what you have to do:

• Disable the ExcelliPrint service
• Create a backup of the config.db file
• Download the SQLite commandline client
• Execute sqlite3 config.db (after cd to %ProgramFiles%\Brooks Internet Software\ExcelliPrint)
• Execute this query:
  sqlite> select * from userdb
...> go
1|admin
  Now you see all the users that ExcelliPrint knows about.
• Execute this query:
  sqlite> select * from userdb_props
...> go
1|admin|password|0466BF8633D56DACBA7EE39D3A4C6C3341664804
2|admin|role|admin
  It’s important that you know which uid the column has where the account you want to reset is specified. In this case, the column uid is 1.
• Execute this query:
  sqlite> update userdb_props set value=”0466BF8633D56DACBA7EE39D3A4C6C3341664804” where uid=1
  This will change the password field for the uid field you know from before. Your password should now be “dataline01″.
• Start the ExcelliPrint Service
• Write down your ExcelliPrint password for future use