I hope you find these Guides and Howtos useful. While some version of these instructions worked for me at one point or another, they may not work as well for you. (For example, an elephant may decide to sit on your computer while you attempt to print to the the BU printers.) So here is the usual disclaimer: use these instructions at your own risk. Enjoy!
Have you noticed that Boston University's ResNet registration only requires the installation of the BUVS software for MS Windows computers? Macs don't need to install BUVS to access BU's network; computers running UNIX or UNIX clones don't need to either. So if you don't want to install BUVS, don't use MS Windows! Try other operating systems like a GNU/Linux distribution or a BSD distribution instead. These can get you on ResNet without BUVS. Since BU does not seem to check computers after the NetReg process, if you regress to MS Windows, remember to secure the computer on your own.
Did your printer run out of ink? Did it break? Did your printer never exist? Sometimes, you just want to use Boston University's printers at 111 Cummington St. instead of your own (after all, you do have a $50 quota for printing at BU). But what if you're not using a ResNet computer? What if you just wanted to print from your computer? Well there's good news: you can print from your own computer to BU's printers!
If you've gotten tired of reading my writing already, Boston University's Personal Computer Support Center offers its own instructions for printing to their printers for MS Windows computers and Apple computers. (The instructions they provide for the Apple computers also works for UNIX and UNIX clones). While the instructions for the Apple computers are acceptable, the instructions for the MS Windows computers scream, "Steal my username and password! Please!"
Since I have created this printing setup several times and since I already wrote an improved set of instructions for several friends, I figure that it probably won't be much more work to place the set of instructions online for few people who still use MS Windows.
Well, now you have everything you need to print to the school printers. Pick what you want to print. Print it to the PostScript printer. Pick a filename for where to save the printout (eg. on your desktop. maybe call it "foobar.ps" you should make the filename end in .ps).
If you want, you can use GSview to look at the file.
Now fire up Filezilla. You will use this to transfer the printout to the school's server. In filezilla, start connection manager or something like that (the button should be on the upper left). Create a new connection and connect to:
Use SFTP as the protocol. (The SFTP protocol is more secure than the FTP one because SFTP uses SSH, which encrypts the communications.) The port should automatically change to 22 when you pick this option. Your username is your BU username. Leave your password blank for now. If you want, you can save this. Then connect. It should give you a security warning the first time you connect (probably safe to continue, if you remember the fingerprint, try to match it to check). Then it will ask you for your password. Type your password. You can then just drag and drop the printout (.ps) file into the server (right panel). (You can use this to delete the old printouts after you print them. I like to leave them around for a while.)
Now fire up PuTTY. The host is once again, acs.bu.edu. You should be using SSH on port 22. If you want, you can type a session name and press the save button to save the session for faster starting next time. Connect. Type your username. Press enter. Type your password (for security, you will not see the password show up when you type it). Press enter. It should display a bit of stuff. You can probably ignore it. It will probably also say that there are new messages for you. You can probably ignore those too. After reading those messages, you will get to a command prompt. enter "ls" without the quotes. You will see your printout listed. To print the file, enter "lpr foobar.ps" where "foobar.ps" is the name of the file you want to print. After you type the first few characters of a file name, you can press [tab] to complete the filename.
When you're done, you can logout by pressing [Ctrl]+[D]. You can also close Filezilla. If you did everything correctly, you should have the printout waiting for you at 111 Cummington Street.