NPD files describe the capabilities of specific printers. Novell® provides these files to ensure that the features available in today's printers can be fully utilized by Novell Distributed Print ServicesTM (NDPSTM).
Novell Printer Definition (NPD) files appear in the Printer Type list when you are creating a Printer Agent using the Novell Gateway's Print Device Subsystem (PDS).
Because many printers in current use do not yet have the full bidirectional communication capabilities NDPS supports, Novell provides printer definition (NPD) files which contain detailed information about the printers they correspond to in a format that NDPS can read and report. This information is then communicated to the NDPS Manager.
NPD files are generally extracted from NPR database files which NDPS references for information about the capabilities and features of the printers and families of printers these files support. By default, these NPR files are located in the server\sys:ndps\resdir\prndef\novell directory.
When you create a new Printer Agent and select a Printer Type, NDPS interprets your selection and references the appropriate NPR file (for example, hp01.npr or ps03.npr) and creates an NPD file in the server\sys:ndps\resdir\prndef\novell directory for that new Printer Agent. The filename for the NPD file created corresponds to the specific printer created (for example, hp4simx.npd).
Occasionally, an NPR file may be updated by Novell, in which case you will likely want to update the NPD files that were generated using the old NPR file. To do this, use the following procedure:
Copy in the new NPR file, replacing the old one.
Delete all the NPD files in the directory.
They will be regenerated or updated when you complete the next step.
Unload and reload all NDPSM.NLMs that use the Resource Management Service whose database is located on this server.