Open System Services Management and Operations Guide (G06.29+, H06.07+)

Open System Services Management and Operations Guide—527191-005
10-1
10 Managing OSS Devices
This section briefly discusses Open System Services (OSS) devices and describes
how to manage printers in the OSS environment.
The Scope of OSS Device Management
The only devices you can manage in the OSS environment are printers. All other
devices are managed through the Guardian environment.
In the OSS environment, printer and tape-drive definitions are not stored in the /dev
directory. Do not modify the contents of the /dev directory.
Device Access
Tape drives are not supported in the OSS environment as devices and do not appear
in the /dev directory. Thus, users cannot access tape drives directly.
The only OSS shell utility that can communicate directly with a tape drive is the pax
utility, which accesses tape devices through low-level software in the Guardian
interface. Guardian tape processes are visible to OSS shell users through Guardian file
system entries in the /G directory (for example, /G/TAPE4), but they are not visible to
OSS programs.
Printers, like tape drives, do not appear in the /dev directory. Therefore, application
programs cannot access printers directly in the OSS environment, although you can
access them indirectly through the shell.
Only network virtual terminals can gain command-line access to the OSS environment.
For information about configuring such terminals, see Section 7, Managing Terminal
Access, and the Telserv Manual.
Managing Printers in the OSS Environment
The OSS printing utilities use the spooler product. Make sure that the spooler is
running on your system. For information about the spooler, see the Spooler Utilities
Reference Manual.
To configure printers in the OSS environment:
1. Specify a system default printer for use when the OSS environment encounters a
print command that does not specify a particular destination printer. Instructions for
doing this are in Specifying a Default Printer on page 10-2.
2. Optionally assign aliases for other printers. Instructions for doing this are in Using
the /etc/printcap or printcap File on page 10-3.
OSS shell commands that print files require Guardian spooler-location names for
access to printers unless shell aliases have been defined as alternative names.