Lukas Beeler's IT Blog

If you have a few printers, you usually want to take good care of them. There are many network administration tools that can help you do that, and here i’m talking mostly about HP’s free offerings. Let’s start with the biggest one first.

HP Web Jetadmin

HP Web Jetadmin is HP’s enterprise tool for printer management. It is free though, so i gave it a try. Turns out it really is an enterprise tool, and much too convoluted for SMB use. I like that it has the ability to at least manage some features from printers made by different manufacturers (in my case, Lexmark). You don’t see that every day. I can’t give a full review of the product, because i only invested half an hour in it, only to find out that it is too big for our environment.

It offers all the features one could possibly need – it can monitor toner, media, configuration, time firmware upgrades and can even be used to configure and maintain print servers. With all these features, deployment of this tool is most likely not going to be a short process. You’ll need to invest a few days to find out about all the kinks, functionality and integrate it into your environment meaningfully.

HP Easy Printer Care

HP Easy Printer Care is HP’s Small Business printer management tool. It only supports up to 15 printers, which is not a problem if you’re a small business that uses workgroup printers. For companies that are using a printer on every desktop, 15 might be too low.

The software is meant for use on a desktop computer, not on a server. I see this as a bit of a drawback, as we usually use Microsoft Small Business Servers at our smaller customers, but you can also install the software on a server – it just can’t send emails and notifications (though most of the larger HP printers can mail notifications!).

The tool can not manage the printer firmware, which is a huge drawback. But it allows easy configuration of several settings even by end users, which are sometimes intimidated by the printer menu or the printer web interface. It also allows rudimentary printer accounting on selected (not all) printers (If you’re looking for a more complete printer account software, i can recommend PaperCut NG).

While i think that Web Jetadmin is overkill for any SMB, Easy Printer Care is sometimes too light on functionality. But i like it’s end user oriented design. If HP adds a few nudges to EPC (like mail, firmware management and minimal third party printer support), it could very well become a good tool for SMBs.

HP Download Manager

Using HP Download Manager is like stabbing a fork into your eye. It’s not pleasant, and after the pain stops you’re blind. Okay, so this might’ve been a bit colorful, but the point still stands. This software is junk, mostly because it doesn’t work. HP Download Manager is a firmware management solution for JetDirect print servers that are either stand alone or embedded into printers. It can’t manage printer firmware, which HP Web JetAdmin can.

Internet mode is broken since ages, there are numerous references about this on the web. Using Wireshark, a web server, and the hosts file will get the software to at least download firmware, but it won’t be able to install the software, complaining about “no firmware file”. It could download the file just fine, and manually applying the file using the JetDirect Webinterface worked just dandy.

As such, i can’t recommend this tool. Don’t install it, it doesn’t work right, and will probably eat your eyes.

Conclusion

HP’s Easy Printer Care is a step in the right direction, HP Download Manager doesn’t work, and HP Web Jetadmin is most likely overkill. My hope is that HP improves Easy Printer Care, allowing it to takeover the functions that HP Download Manager should do.

HP’s LaserJet 4250 is a b/w workgroup printer. As such, it is as unspectacular as it can get for a printer.

We’ve primarely used Lexmark err IBM printers before, like the InfoPrint 1532. The first and most important difference between the IBM and the HP printers is the tray numbering – HP usually counts the multipurpose tray as “Tray 1″, while IBM counts the first real tray as “Tray 1″. This is especially important for users which are not accustomed to this. In fact, i still prefer the naming scheme IBM/Lexmark used here, it just so much more intuitive. One of the reasons for moving away from the IBM printers are the slightly higher cost, but also the exorbitant delivery times (a normal IP1532 can take up to a month, while Also usually has all HP printers on stock and can ship overnight).

In a System i environment, it’s important to note that HP offers their own IPDS modules for these printers, though these didn’t work as expected. We usually ship our HP printers with an ExcelliPrint license, which can be used even after we’ve replaced a printer with a newer model, thus lowering costs for our customers and still having a high quality IPDS interface from our System i. I’ve written aboute ExcelliPrint before, especially what needs to be done when using OCR-B with ExcelliPrint and HP printers without a builtin OCR-B font.

In a Windows environment, the HP LaserJet ships with rather well done Windows drivers, which is quite the norm for HP’s business printers, and no-frills printer drivers are even starting to appear for some DeskJet printers. One of the features i like most about the HP windows driver is that it allows you to predefine some paper settings on the server, name them however you want, and have them automatically published to all clients. This gives you the possibility to save your office workers time and reduce errors when you’re using some standard settings to print certain documents.

There is an updated version of the IBM AFP Driver available that fixes most of the color conversion issues. It may be included in recent versions of System i Access, but it might also help to try this direct download link here.

My suggestion would be to no longer use the method below.

IBM provides it’s own printer driver for creating AFP overlays. However, this printer driver is broken for quite some time, and doesn’t handle the colors used in color overlays correctly. If you want to create black and white overlays on your System i, use the original IBM AFP print driver.

If you want to create color overlays, things become a tad more difficult. First, you’ll need a device that supports IPDS FS45 for color printing. There are several IPDS ROMs sold for Lexmark Color Lasers which do not support FS45.

ExcelliPrint however does support FS45 (and works flawlessly with color overlays) – and no, i’m still not getting paid for writing about ExcelliPrint.

But back to our overlays. Creating a working, fully fledged color overlay is not difficult, but it’s an unintegrated process with lots of manual steps.

First, you need two pieces of Software: the InfoPrint converter software, for which you’ll need to install 5722-IP1 on your System i and a way to create TIFF images (if you’re using e.G. Adobe Illustrator for creating your overlays, you can skip this) – i’ve found ZAN Image Printer to suit my needs perfectly.

After Installing 5722-IP1, you can find the InfoPrint converter software in the following IFS directory:

/QIBM/ProdData/InfoprintServer/Transforms/Install/Image/setup.exe

ust install the application, and you’re already done.

Next step would be to install the ZAN Image Printer.

Now you can print your Microsoft Word overlay using the ZAN Image Printer – make sure to choose the following settings: TIFF, 24bit, LZW compression.

Save this file wherever you’ll find it again. After that, use the tiff2afp tool to create the AFP overlay itself:

tiff2afp -a ioca45 -pagetype overlay -cmp jpeg foo.tiff

This will create foo.afp. Note that it will probably look broken in the AFP viewer – this is normal (and a bug of the AFP viewer).

All you need to do now is to upload this overlay file into your System i – i’m not completely sure how that works (our dev guys handle that nicely), but i’ve found some information about it here.

If you have 5722-IP1 installed on your System i, you can create PDF documents quite easily by using a virtual PDF printer.

This virtual PDF printer can be created by using the following two commands:

CRTPSFCFG PSFCFG(QUSRSYS/PRTPDF) PDFGEN(*STMF) +
PDFDEVTYPE(*IP40240) PDFPPRDWR1(*A4) PDFPPRDWR2(*A4) PDFMULT(*NO) +
PDFDTAQ(*NONE) FNTSUBMSG(*NO) IPDSPASTHR(*NO) PDFDIR('/PDF/')

CRTDEVPRT DEVD(PRTPDF) DEVCLS(*LAN) TYPE(*IPDS) MODEL(0) LANATTACH(*IP) AFP(*YES) +
PORT(5039) ONLINE(*YES) FONT(223) FORMFEED(*AUTOCUT) +
RMTLOCNAME('127.0.0.1') USRDFNOBJ(QUSRSYS/PRTPDF *PSFCFG)

In case you’re wondering what is running on Port 5039 on localhost – usually nothing. When you start the printer writer for this printer using STRPRTWTR, you’ll see three jobs for this printer instead of the usual two. One of them is the virtual PDF print server, which is spawned by the PSF configuration.

And this is exactly the problem i ran into: Port 5039 on localhost was already in use (in this case by a third party application), and so the virtual PDF print server was unable to start. Of course the only thing you saw in the logfiles was that the PRTPDF print writer was unable to connect to it’s print server, and not that the port was already in use.

Note that the virtual print server fetches it’s configuration from the device description, so if you change the port in the device description, everything will work automatically.

Printing from the System i sucks as much as printing from any other platform – but with one added twist. The System i has it’s own proprietary printing system called IPDS.

In general, the System i can talk to network enabled printers that support a PCL or PS datastream directly – they must also support a print control protocol like SNMP or the more popular PJL. If you want to attach a desktop printer, you will have to use IBMs iSeries Access. And then there’s IPDS, which some printers can support through either a option ROM, a network appliance, or a conversion software.

If you’re wondering if your printer supports PCL/PS, look it up at the manufacturers website. Here are my quick and dirty rules, which are usually 99% right:

• SOHO equipment usually doesn’t support PCL/PS
• Workgroup equipment always does – there’s a small exception for low price workgroup equipment
• B&W desktop printers above 300 CHF usually do, Color desktop printers above 500 CHF usually do

iSeries Access

iSeries Access can be used to connect printers without a network interface, or without PCL/PS support to the System i. This functionality is quite rudimentary, and can’t be used to print customer facing documents. For the quick printing of a query or a joblog, this is usually sufficient.

If you have a printer that does support PCL/PS, but has no network interface (or an unsuitable one, like cheap print servers), you can use HPT through iSeries Access – this will allow you to support all the printout options that HPT supports.

iSeries Access without HPT is not really an option, except for some quick & dirty printing. iSeries Access with HPT isn’t quite as bad, but a network interface for the printer can be had for just a bit of money.

Host Print Transform

Host Print Transform, also known as HPT. I’ve written about this earlier.

HPT isn’t that bad, and can work well for desktop printers. It’s what we usually use for desktop printers.

IPDS Option roms

You can get IPDS option roms for most workgroup printers. The problem with IPDS option roms is that they’re hugely expensive (around 1500CHF for a single printers). So you’ll have to buy an expensive workgroup printer, but also have to buy an expensive IPDS option rom. If your printer dies, and you can no longer get a similar replacement – your investment has just become worthless.

The good thing about IPDS option roms is that they’re usually troublefree, and come with all the important fonts (like OCR-B) preloaded. This allows for a very easy deployment, at a in my opinion unreasonable cost.

IPDS converters

There are many products that do conversion from IPDS to PCL. I only have experience with a single product ExcelliPrint. This product works quite well, though there are a few things that you’ll need to think about, like OCR-B support.

There are also embedded appliances available that do the same thing. I’ve never used them, so i can’t tell much about them. Maybe those have embedded font support, avoiding the soft font issue that you’ll need to be aware off when using ExcelliPrint.

ExcelliPrint costs about 750 CHF, about half that of an IPDS ROM. If you only have a single printer, an IPDS ROM might not be that more expensive. But when we’re talking about 5-10 printers, the difference becomes quite noticeable.

Conclusions

So what should you do?

I generally recommend against any use of iSeries Access, even with a HPT printer. Purchase a simple desktop laser which is supported by HPT. For printing of invoices etc., i would recommend a workgroup printer with ExcelliPrint.

Zebra manufactures label printers. While they do have their own print servers, i’ve seen many deployments where non-Zebra print servers where used. These printers are usually attached to a System i by using a remote outq and a print server.

The difficulty now comes when you have to update their firmware – of course you could just go and plug it into a PC with an old IEEE1284 port, but that might not be very convenient because laptops no longer have them, USB attachment has it’s own set of associated problems, and one might not want to walk to every printer just to upgrade the firmware.

Zebra’s printservers have integrated abilities to upgrade the firmware, and they even have tools to do this job for you. But in this special case, i had to look for my own solution.

As the instructions for a local update, which consisted of sending the file to LPT1:, seemed pretty straightforward, i got my hand on some Unix-tools.

Netcat is available for Windows. You can use it to upgrade the firmware remotely by using a simply trick. Copy nc.exe to C:\windows\system32, extract the firmware to a directory, and then just run the following commandline:

nc 192.168.1.50 9100 < firmware.ext

Note that nc doesn’t exist even after the firmware was flashed successfully, you’ll have to exit it by using CTRL-C.

I had an interesting call – a customer bought a multi function device on their own, and wanted it integrated in their network. I’ve always made bad experiences when customers bought equipment on their own, because usually the devices aren’t really fit for the intended purpose – SOHO equipment is not meant for companies with their own servers.

In this case, the customer bought a HP Photosmart C5100 All-in-One device. This thing looked rather fragile, but it came with an ethernet interface, which would probably make life a lot easier to integrate it into the server. The device couldn’t do Scan-to-Email, Scan-to-Share, it couldn’t integrate with Active Directory, in fact it doesn’t even speak PCL or PS.

My first try was to just install the print driver on the server, but even that was a no go. HP’s spec don’t state compatibility with Windows Server 2003, but i tried anyway. It didn’t work, Spoolsv.exe crashed right after installing the driver.

So i couldn’t even integrate the printing function into the network. I’ve installed HP’s Software onto the two PCs where the printer will get used primarily. This worked flawlessly (though i didn’t install HP’s Photo Smart Suite, just the drivers). Interesting is that you can access the Memory Card reader installed into the device using a standard SMB share – that’s a rather elegant solution.

In the end, it seems to work so far. But it’s not an elegant, and by no means a well integrated solution.

HP does offer solutions like the OfficeJet 9100, which is just a little bit more expensive, but has a lot more functionality. With the proper plug in (license) card, it even supports Active Directory.

If you’re mostly working for windows shops, and you’re less than 30 years old, you probably only heard of dot matrix printers in history books.

But they still exist. Just today, i installed a new IBM 4247. In this day and age, they even come with Ethernet interfaces, and you can configure the edges using software (instead of tiny wheels).

The interesting part was that i’ve replaced a (very old) laser printer with a dot matrix printer – most people would consider this a downgrade, but dot matrix printers have several advantages over regular laser printers (though i personally prefer laser printers).

• Huge reports on continuous paper are easy to hold and transport, not really the case with 300 sheets of A4 cutsheet paper.
• Printing on layered graphite paper allows for easy and fast creation transport documents and bills, with laser printers you’ll have to use multiple drawers and a tacker attachment

The funny part is that a 4247 with IPDS and Ethernet costs about 6000 CHF – you can buy a really good laser printer for that amount of money. In the end it’s a question of worker preference. I still think that dot matrix printouts look 80ies.

When installing network printers, you usually have a wide variety of available drivers to choose from. PCL, PCL5, PCL6, PCLXL, PS2, PS3, WHQL, not WHQL, etc.

But which is the right one? The answer is usually “it depends”.

In General, WHQL certified drivers have less features, and do not offer the same graphic representation pictures usually found in normal Vendor drivers – this differs from vendor to vendor though, some invest more time into their WHQL drivers than others do. I usually prefer WHQL drivers, if they look halfway decent (GUI perspective). They are updated a lot less, and usually cause less issues.

But this is just the first step toward choosing the correct printer drivers, because you also have to choose the print language used. Most modern network printers support PCL5, PCL6 (which is the same as PCLXL) and PS3. PCL6 and PCL5 are relativly different languages, which is why PCL6 is not downward compatible – i’ve never seen a PCL6 printer which didn’t support PCL5, but they may exist. Usually, the PCL emulation of SOHO/Workgroup printers works better than their Postscript counterpart. Which is why i try the PCL drivers first, and if they don’t do what they should i will fallback to the PS3 ones.

Many vendors have PCL6 drivers which aren’t feature complete yet, and their PCL5 drivers are usually superior – also a very interesting point. In some cases, i had to use both PCL and PS drivers to get correct output – some Programs wouldn’t work correctly with the first, others not with the second. This was with an InfoPrint 1220, where Lexmark is the OEM.

I usually check the PCL5/WHQL driver first before trying the other drivers. Remember that the featureset offered between those drivers may vary, and if you’re in need of a special feature you will have to look at all of the combinations.

When you’re buying cheap SOHO/Workplace printers, you might have encountered printers that support both Host-Based printing and PCL as input options. These printers usually have a very slow CPU, and the PCL input support is for supporting Linux or other operating systems where the manufacturer doesn’t provide direct support. This is why the Host-Based driver usually produces the better results, and prints faster (if your CPU is fast enough). I’ve seen this combination on some HP Workplace b/w laser printers

My opinion about printing on the System i is that it’s as bad as all the other platforms.

I’ve got an interesting problem today which wasn’t that easy to solve.

A customer complained that printing some larger forms were failing to print correctly. Sometimes some pages would not print, but it was highly irregular. Sometimes everything worked fine, and everything printed correctly – but sometimes it failed to print, and the spoolfile was hanging in WRT status.

My first step with debugging such problems is checking this list of common problems. This usually weeds out most of them. However, in this case everything looked alright. The *DEVD was okay, the *PSFCFG was okay, Cumulative PTF and Print Group PTF levels were okay, and no newer PTFs for similar problems were available.

The next step was looking at the job log of the print job. In case you’re wondering how to do that, it’s quite simple:

On this display, just press F17 (which is usually shift-F5). You will then see the regular job display where you can access the job log with option 10.

If you don’t find anything the Joblog, netstat is another great command to have a look at. Have a look at checksum failures in the detail connection display – this can help you tracking down problems related to your lower network layers.

In this particular case, i’ve seen the message PQT3630 in the job log. This message, unfortunately, doesn’t really show you what the problem is – it just lists IPDS sense codes, and not all of them are documented.

There’s an interesting Document from IBM which lists many common sense codes. Mine where not among them.

My cause code was “08210100 DE000001 00000000 D62D0000″. I don’t really know what it means, i wasn’t able to find that. Since the printer in question was old anyway (an InfoPrint 1120), we decided to replace the printer.