NEW SOFTWARE RELEASE ==================== Products involved: AXIS 570, AXIS 670 Specific software: Release date: April 15, 1997 Release type: PRODUCTION Software version: 5.33 Software media: AXIS 570 Flash AXIS 670 Flash Software checksum: AXIS 570 Flash AXIS 670 Flash Last preceding release: AXIS 570 5.23 AXIS 670 5.23 Flash loading instructions: See UpgrInfo.txt document Release document: 1.00 --------------------------------------------------------------------- IMPORTANT! ========== When upgrading from release 5.23.4 or older, the print server will set all parameter values back to factory defaults. To avoid loosing your settings it is recommended that you upload the parameter list to a file using FTP before upgrading the printserver software. When the new software is installed to the print server, the original parameter values may be restored by downloading the parameter file using FTP. Before downloading the parameter list two SNA parameter names must be renamed. Change the parameter names HOSTADDR to H1_ADDR and HOST_SAP to H1_SAP. If you don't have access to FTP, it is recommended that you print the parameterlist before installing the new software. The printout is useful when setting the old parameter values. Printing the parameter list is done by pressing the test button twice. --------------------------------------------------------------------- Easy Release Description: 1. The non SNA portion of the software is based on release 5.30. 2. IBM 5494 Control Unit emulation (LU6.2 non IPDS printing) has been implemented. 3. Autoconfiguration support has been implemented for 5494 emulation. 4. A number of IBM Twinax Printer emulations including 3812/5219, 4214, 5224, 5225, 5256 and 4230 have been added. This implies vastly improved formatting capabilities and font support in the AS/400 environment. 5. SNA LU1/3 job status reporting has been improved. 6. The SNA parameter SNA_FR_TYPE has been added to control the use of 802.2 or DIX frames. 7. The IBM Job Control parameter REINIT has been added. 8. The IBM Page Format parameter PCORI has been added. 9. The parameter value LOCK has been added to the IBM Page Format parameters MPL and MPP. 10. The SNA parameters DEVICE_EMUL, NWORK_NAME, MODE_NAME, LU_NAME, CP_NAME, H1_NW_NAME, H1_MOD_NAME, H1_LU_NAME, N_PRT_DEV and SNA_HEXDUMP have been added. The added functionality is detailed below. 11. Test page has been upgraded with 5494 CU mode specific information. 12. Logical printers #1-8 are now by default mapped to LPT1. 13. More SNA parameters have been added to the Front Panel setup for the AXIS 570MIO/670MIO. 14. Support for SNA traffic monitoring has been added. 15. A problem with SNA LU1 acknowledgements has been corrected. 16. The SNA parameter IR_TIME is used in 3174 CU mode only. The following list is a compilation of changes made to the 560/660 (non-SNA) software in the 5.30 release: 17. Added support for Web based configuration of print server parameters over HTTP. Monitoring of printer status also supported. Not available for NPS models and AXIS 540/542. 18. Added support for DHCP. Not available for NPS models and AXIS 540/542. 19. Added support for IEEE 1284 bi-directional communication over the parallel ports in AXIS 560/660. (Not available for NPS models and AXIS 150/152) 20. Logical printer support for NetWare (PSERVER & NPRINTER) added. 21. Print server status support in NWAdmin & Pconsole added. Not available for NPS models and AXIS 540/542. 22. NetWare Printer notification support improved. Now uses the notification list in the printer object. Error notification can now be disabled completely. Not available for NPS models and AXIS 540/542. 23. Status page improved. Added information about the status of each connection to the file servers. 24. Preferred tree supported in NDS. Previously only preferred server was supported. 25. Dynamic update of printer configuration using Pconsole/NWAdmin supported. Added queues will immediately be serviced by the print server. Not available for NPS models and AXIS 540/542. 26. NDS login with read-only or non-existent replica corrected. 27. NetWare. Busy is no longer reported when printing directly to a parallel port (LPT1 or LPT2) since this information is not useful. Paper-Out or Fault is reported if something is wrong with the printer. 28. Netware. A rare problem causing the print server to log in multiple times to the server has been corrected. 29. Added support for LIP (Large Internet Packets). Routing NetWare over FDDI link now works. Print server now negotiates packet size correctly. Only available for products supporting NDS. 30. The SNMP write community string is no longer printed when the parameter list is printed using the test button. 31. When printing in AppleTalk environment, an end of file character is only sent when printing PostScript jobs. 32. Changed LPD to accept several data files in the same job. 33. Japanese versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer required the PASV command in FTP to be supported. This has now been implemented. Recommendation: - An update to this release is recommended if any problems, related to the above changes, have been observed. Update is also recommended to users who want access to the extended AS/400 support made possible by the 5494 CU emulation. Best regards AXIS COMMUNICATIONS AB ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Appendix A - DETAILED TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION OF RELEASE App A Products involved: AXIS 570, AXIS 670 Software version: 5.33 1. The non SNA portion of the software is based on release 5.30. The changes made to the non SNA software in the 5.30 release are detailed in items #17 - #33 below. 2. Support for IBM 5494 Control Unit emulation (LU6.2 printing) has been added for the AS/400 environment. This gives considerable improvements through the new IBM Twinax Printer Emulations. In mainframe environments, the 3174 CU mode is used. The new SNA parameter DEVICE_EMUL controls if 5494 CU mode (DEVICE_EMUL = 5494) or 3174 CU mode (DEVICE_EMUL = 3174), should be used. Simultaneous support of 5494 CU and 3174 CU is not possible. 3. Full autoconfiguration support has been implemented for 5494 emulation. When running 5494 CU mode and setting the parameter AUTODIAL to YES, the print server will contact the host and initiate autoconfiguration. 4. A number of IBM Twinax Printer emulations including 3812/5219, 4214, 5224, 5225, 5256 and 4230 have been added. This implies vastly improved text formatting capabilities and font support in the AS/400 environment. These Printer Emulations are available when running in 5494 CU mode only. 5. SNA LU1/3 job status reporting has been improved. In some cases the end of job acknowledge was sent back to the host system before the last character of the print job had left the Print Server. This is corrected. 6. The SNA parameter SNA_FR_TYPE has been added to control use of 802.2 or DIX frames. An auto-dectection mode is also available (SNA_FR_TYPE = FR_AUTO). The default value is 802.2. 7. The IBM Job Control parmameter REINIT has been added. When set to YES, the printer settings are resent to the printer between each job. The default value is YES. 8. The IBM Page Format parameter PCORI has been added. When set to YES, the Landscape format is rotated 180 degrees in relation to the IBM standard Landscape orientation. The default value is NO. 9. The parameter value LOCK has been added to the IBM Page Format parameters MPL and MPP. When set to LOCK, the host cannot override the MPL and/or MPP settings in the Print Server. Thus, the possible values of MPL and MPP in addition to the actual MPL and MPP settings are: DIS : No check of page/line length is made by the Print Server. ENA : The Print Server checks page/line length, but MPL and MPP settings sent by the host overrides the settings in the Print Server. LOCK : The Print Server checks page/line length. MPL and MPP settings sent by the host cannot override the settings in the Print Server. 10. The SNA parameters NWORK_NAME, MODE_NAME, LU_NAME, CP_NAME, H1_NW_NAME, H1_MOD_NAME, H1_LU_NAME and N_PRT_DEV have been added. These parameters are used in the 5494 CU emulation mode. The parameter N_PRT_DEV controls the number of printer devices created by autoconfiguration in the AS/400 host. The default value is 1 for AXIS 570MIO/670MIO and 3 for AXIS 570/670. For more information on these parameters, refer to AXIS 570/670 User's Manual, Revision 2.1, part no 14425. 11. Test page has been upgraded with 5494 CU mode-specific information. 12. Logical printers #1-8 are now by default mapped to LPT1. 13. More SNA parameters has been added to the Front Panel setup for the AXIS 570MIO/670MIO. 14. Support for SNA traffic monitoring has been added. When the new SNA parameter SNA_HEXDUMP is enabled, incoming and outgoing SNA packets are logged and written to one of the printer ports in ASCII text format. The main benefit of this feature is that the SNA traffic can be recorded and downloaded to a PC, for example via the Print Servers serial port. On the PC, the traffic image can be stored as a text file. The generated file can then be used by AXIS engineers for analyzing the SNA traffic. Note: When downloading to the serial port, some kind of flow control protocol should be used (XON/XOFF). 15. A problem with SNA LU1/3 acknowledgements has been corrected. When several LU1/3 print jobs were queued, incorrect responses were sometimes sent causing the current job to end prematurely. This is corrected. 16. The SNA parameter IR_TIME is now used in 3174 CU mode only. When using the 5494 CU mode, the intervention-required timeout is always 20 seconds. The following list is a compilation of changes made to the 560/660 (non-SNA) software in the 5.30 release: 17.Supports HTTP 1.1 and HTML 2.0 18.The DHCP functionality is optional and is enabled by setting the DHCP_ENB parameter in the TCPIP menu. The default value is OFF. 19.Added support for IEEE 1284 bi-directional communication over the parallel port. Nibble and Byte modes are supported. Bi-directional support may be turned off setting the 'PRx_IN' parameter in the logical printer to 'NONE'. (Not available for NPS models and AXIS 150/152) 20.A NetWare printer can now be configured to use a logical printer in addition to the physical printers supported today. In order to configure a NetWare printer as a logical printer the following must be done: In the printer object, set 'Printer type' to 'Other/unknown'. Append '!x' to the printer name, where x is the logical printer number. For example: to configure the printer 'axis_printer' to use logical printer 2, change the name of the printer to 'axis_printer!2' Logical printers are supported in both bindery mode and in NDS mode for both PSERVER and NPRINTER. 21.Pconsole and NWAdmin can now display the status of a running print server. For example: a) When displaying the print server object in NWAdmin, the 'Status' field will show 'Running' if the print server logged in to NDS. The 'Version' field will show 'Unknown' and the version number of the firmware in the Axis Print Server. The Description will show the model, version number and date of the firmware. The same information is available under 'Information and Status' in Pconsole. The 'Unload' button will allow the Operator of the print server to perform a 'hard reset' or a 'soft reset' of the print server. 'Unload Immediately' will perform a 'hard reset', causing the print server to reboot immediately. 'Unload after current job' will perform a 'soft reset' and restart all protocols without aborting the currently printing jobs. Restarting the print server will affect all protocols, not just NetWare. b) When displaying the 'Print Layout' of the print server in NWAdmin, you can see the status of all printers and queues connected to this print server, including warning signs of stalled printers (paper out, offline). The Organisation objects and the Organisational Unit objects can also display a 'Print Layout', the difference is that they display the print layout of _all_ print servers in that container. This feature makes it easy for the administrator to tell the status of the entire print system. c) When displaying the printer object, you can monitor the status of the printer in the 'Printer Status' field. The print server will report problems with the connected printer and any problems with the printer will immediately show up here. If the printer is printing a NetWare job, the status of the job can be monitored here as well. You can see: Which job is printing The print queue it came from Number of copies requested/complete The size of the print job How many percent of the print that has been completed. 22.The print server now uses the Notification list of the Printer that is currently printing when problems occur. The notification list is only used to report printer errors, not job completion. To setup a list of users/groups to be notified of printer problems, use NWAdmin/Pconsole and configure the 'Notification' of the 'Printer Object'. Here you can setup when the print job owner and other configured users should be notified and how often they should be notified. Hint: Setup the print job owner to receive a notice after one minute and thereafter at a 5 minute interval. Then setup the Administrator/Supervisor to receive his/her first notice after 10 minutes, and an interval of your choise. Now when a printer reports an error, the user has 10 minutes to fix the problem himself/herself before the administrator is sent a notice about the problem. Printer notification is supported in both bindery and NDS mode. Notification in NPRINTER mode has always been supported. 23.The 'test page' printed when you press the test button on the print server now has a lot more information about NetWare on it, this will help you solving problems with the NetWare support, should one occur. The status page will now show the name of all NetWare servers the print server is connected to and show the status of each connection. This will help if there is a configuration error. The following errors can be reported: - print server object not found in NDS tree Please verify that there is an object with the name listed above defined in the NDS tree - the print server cannot login because the password is incorrect. Please clear the password using PCONSOLE or NWAdmin and the print server should be able to log in - the print server cannot authenticate to the server because there are no more free licenses on that server. Wait for an available licence or check the server console monitor Replace references to NDS with bindery database for status on bindery mode connections. These errors represent the most common errors that users get with their print servers. It is impossible to detect these errors using NetPilot, Pconsole or NWAdmin. Printing the test page will tell the user what's wrong. 24.As an alternative to setting which file server the print server should use to initially log in to NDS, you can now specify the TREE instead. This: a) Allows easier setup and management. Fewer choises means that the server is easier to setup. It also makes it easier for you if you should be forced to remove/rename the file server the print server is connected to. The print server will automatically find a new server to connect to. b) Removes a single point of failure. If the file server specified would be down at the time the print server starts up, the downed server would delay the login of the print server until the file server comes up. By specifying the TREE instead, the print server will choose a different server to log in to instead. You specify the tree to log in to in the PSERVER_NDS parameter. Replace the file server name with TREE:. 25.If the administrator adds or removes a queue or an object to be notified, this change will immediately affect the print server. For this to work, you must have operator privileges to the print server. Previously, dynamic updates were only supported when Axis NetPilot was used to configure the print server. 26. The print server can now authenticate to and serve queues on an NDS file server that has a read-only replica of the partition it resides in. The actual login is done against a server that has a writeable replica of that partition. NDS servers without any replica at all is also supported. 27. Printer busy will no longer be reported from parallell printers. Printer busy will still be reported when using a serial printer or a logical printer. 28. Sometimes the print server could log in multiple times to an NDS server, occupying several server licenses on that server. This problem is rare and should only have affected very few sites. This problem has been corrected. 29. NW3.12, NW4.x. Server supports burst mode. Packet size negotiation is made using GetBigPacketNCPMaxPacketSize and connection stability is verified using a LIP-packet. If this does not work then burst mode is turned off and the packet size is set to 512 bytes. FDDI requires packets to be smaller than 600 bytes. NW3.11: Server does not support LIP. If the server is on the other side of a router then burst mode is turned off and a packet size of 512 bytes is used. LIP is only supported in print servers supporting NDS. 30. Printing the SNMP write community was a security leak since SNMP can be used to change all parameters if the write community is known. 31. Sending 0x04 after print jobs in AppleTalk environments must only be done when printing PostScript files. If the print job is not PostScript then no extra character is added. 32. Changed behaviour of LPD at job end. LPD now accepts additional data files because some LPR implementations behaves that way. Before, LPD would not accept any more data after receiving the amount specified in the "Receive data file" (0x03) command. 33. Japanese versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer required the PASV command in FTP to be supported. This has now been implemented. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Appendix B - SOFTWARE LIMITATIONS App B Products involved: AXIS 570, AXIS 670 Software version: 5.33 1. The SNA stack is single host only. Multiple IBM hosts cannot access the Print Server simultaneously. 2. Although it is possible to define several logical units on the IBM host system, the AXIS 570/670 will only print one SNA job at a time. SNA Jobs are held in a print queue within the AXIS 570/670 and are processed on a first-come-first-serve basis. 3. The SNA parameters LU_NAME and CP_NAME must be equal. ----------------------------------------------------------------------