FacetWin remote printers (where the printer physically resides on the PC) are created in the UNIX print spool system with a printer name that begins with the "fct_" prefix. In some cases the printer name prefix may cause problems with applications expecting the printer name to be a certain way or it may just be desirable to name remote printers differently. In either case, there are two ways the prefix can be removed or avoided.

1. The FacetWin "add a printer" utility script, "fct_rlpadmin" can be modified to remove or change the prefix.

   >>> Be very aware that doing this could be dangerous! <<<
   Use this method only if you are experienced in figuring out what UNIX shell scripts will do and are confident that your modifications will be used for the benefit of good and not for evil!

   There are places in the script where files are removed based upon the name of the printer. If, for the sake of disastrous example, you modified the script to remove the prefix and had created a printer named "root" (instead of "fct_root"), and you tried to remove it you could wipe out your entire "root" filesystem.

   That being said... all that needs to be changed is one line in the "fct_rlpadmin" script (under "/usr/bin" and/or under "/usr/facetwin/bin"):

   ############################################
   PRINTER_NAME=fct_$A
   ############################################

   Please be very careful if you change this line...

2. The safer way to have a FacetWin remote printer named however you'd like is to first create the remote printer the normal way with FacetWin, complete with "fct_" prefix. Then use the regular UNIX "add a printer" utility to create a system printer that uses the FacetWin remote printer device. FacetWin's remote print daemons don't care what name the printer is called or how the printjob gets to the printer device. They just direct what they get across the network to the PC's shared printer.

   The printer devices that the FacetWin remote print daemons listen to are under the "/usr/facetwin/fct_pipes" subdirectory. You can probably see the device names with "lpstat -v".

   fct_rlpadmin -a howie ...

   Creates a printer called:

   fct_howie

   With a printer device (actually a named pipe) of:

   /usr/facetwin/fct_pipes/fct_howie

   When adding a printer your normal way, instead of using a printer device like "/dev/lp0", use the FacetWin pipe. If the pipe pathname is too long for your "add a printer" utility or too long for your "spool string" then you can create a symbolic link to it with a shorter name and use it instead:

   ln -s /usr/facetwin/fct_pipes/fct_howie /dev/fct_howie

Good luck! Please let us know at support@facetcorp.com if you have any trouble implementing either scheme or if you have any questions about them.