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The administration of printers is much easier now. You can either control
your printers from the command line with the lpadmin program and
by editing the configuration files in the '/etc/cups/' directory, or by the
graphical tools 'PrinterDrake' and 'Kups', or by the web interface of CUPS (Go
to http://localhost:631/ with any web
browser).
There are also special tools like kupsdconf for configuring the
CUPS daemon, tools for color calibration, cartridge changing on win printers,
nozzle cleaning, and so on ...
An additional hint for all configuration programs: If they ask you for
login and password, you normally have to log in as 'root'. As long as you
don't change the access permissions of the CUPS daemon in
'/etc/cups/cupsd.conf', that is.
Note: When you have added a new printer, you should always check
its default options. Set the correct paper size and select a higher output
quality/resolution when the initial one is poor. For text printing set the
margins so that nothing of the text gets cut off. Do a color calibration when possible. Most bad
quality printouts are a result of poor default settings.
Note: All what is shown here works in all the security levels up
to "medium" without any changes to the system's configuration. If you want to
use CUPS in the "high" or "paranoid" security mode, read the "Security Level" section.
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'PrinterDrake' is Mandrake's default configuration tool for CUPS. It is
first started during the installation of Linux Mandrake 7.2 when you are
configuring your printer(s). You can also call it when your system is
installed by clicking on the printer icon in "DrakConf" or by typing
/usr/sbin/printerdrake & at the command line. If you are not
in X, you will get a text mode interface.
The operation of the program is rather intuitive, you simply follow the
instructions given on the screen. When you choose one of the existing queues
for modifying or deleting, you always have to choose the printer's connection
type ("Local"/"Remote"/"Windows"), even if you do not want to change it or if
you want to delete the queue. On the next screen the printer's name must be
entered, location and description are optional. They are displayed by all
graphical printing or administration front ends and also by the web interface
and help users to find the most suitable printer for their needs.
If more than one printer is detected on your machine, you are asked which
printer should be assigned to the queue name you have entered. Then, you get a
list of all available printer drivers. The driver suitable for your printer
will be highlighted.
For many printers there is more than one choice. The best choice are usually
the GIMP-Print drivers: the
"CUPS + GIMP-print v4.0" drivers allow a comfortable color calibration, and
the "Foomatic + stp-4.0 (GIMP-Print)" drivers have more adjustment
possibilities.
"Foomatic" means that this PPD file is generated by linuxprinting.org, the second part refers
to the Ghost Script driver. "CUPS + GIMP-Print" means that the driver is based
on the filters provided with CUPS and on the special CUPS drivers of
GIMP-Print. You should consult linuxprinting.org/printer_list.cgi,
to see which driver is recommended for which printing task on your printer. Do
not hesitate to set up more than one queue for one printer to be able to
choose between different drivers.
If the printed test page is of poor quality or at a wrong paper size, you
usually should accept this driver anyhow.
Many drivers (especially GIMP-Print) are preconfigured poorly and thus the
test pages of a rather bad quality. Unfortunately, 'PrinterDrake' has no
possibility to change the default options. You should run 'Kups' or the WWW administration tool afterward to
fine tune the options.
When you answer "No", you get back to the model menu to try another
driver.
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The most sophisticated printer administration program for CUPS is the
KDE-based 'Kups' (Menu: "Configuration"/"Printing"/"Kups", command line:
kups &). You do not need to have KDE running as your desktop
environment, it suffices that KDE is installed on your system (this is even
the case in the 300 MB minimum installation).
'Kups' shows a list of all printers and classes in a tree on the left and
the properties or the jobs of the chosen printer on the right. To change one
of the displayed printers, classes or jobs, you simply click on the
appropriate object with the right mouse button. You will get a menu with the
things you can do with this object.
The most important thing here are the "Configure Printer" and "Test Printer"
options in the printer menus. They let you change the default options (like
resolution, color/gray scale, paper size, and so on) and print a test page, so
you can optimize the defaults for your typical printing tasks. For changing
the printer's name, driver, or description, use the "Properties" button in the
lower right corner of the main window (only when the "Infos" view and a local
printer is selected).
For adding a printer or class there is a very sophisticated wizard: you
simply choose "Printer" and then "Add" in the menus of CUPS and the wizard
starts. It auto-detects local printers (parallel, serial, USB) and when you
install an SMB (printer on server running Windows) or a Socket (printer
connected by Ethernet) printer, the wizard scans the local network to search
for available printers of this type. Just press the "Scan" button on the
appropriate screen of the wizard. Afterward you simply click on the desired
Socket printer or you choose the SMB server in the workgroup tree and
double-click it, and then choose the desired printer.
In the model/driver selection you can look at the available options with
the "Show Options" button before you choose the driver for your printer. The
options dialog also shows the driver type (for example "CUPS + GIMP-Print").
If there is more than one driver for a model entry, you get a little menu to
choose the driver from. Note that for some driver entries the model name is
preceded by the manufacturer's name whereas for others not, so check both
locations in the list (especially when you search for the "CUPS + GIMP-Print"
drivers).
To configure a remote CUPS server, choose "File" and then "options" in the
menu and replace the "localhost" in the "CUPS host" field with the name of the
server.
If you have started 'Kups' as 'root', you can also configure the CUPS
daemon by choosing "File" and then "Configure CUPS daemon" in the menu.
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The WWW interface of CUPS can either be invoked by
"Configuration"/"Printing"/"CUPS WWW admin tool" or by pointing your browser
at http://localhost:631/ (local
CUPS daemon) or to http://<server name>:631/ for a remote CUPS
server. The WWW interface does not have as much functionality as 'Kups', but
you can also use it from clients running a different operating system than
Linux. It is even possible to use it in text mode with console browsers like
'Lynx', 'links', or 'w3m'. See the CUPS
Software Administrators Manual for details on how to use it.
Notice: when you have changed something and you go back to a previous page
using the "Back" function of your browser, you have to reload the page to make
your changes visible.
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To add, remove and configure printer and class queues from the command line
or from scripts ('PrinterDrake' is such a script) use
lpadmin.
Here are some examples:
To add a queue named "deskjet" for an HP DeskJet 840C on the USB enter:
lpadmin -p deskjet -E -v usb:/dev/usb/lp0 \
-m HP/DeskJet_840C-stp.ppd
To change the driver for the "deskjet" queue and add some information,
enter:
lpadmin -p deskjet -m HP/gimp-print/pcl-840.ppd \
-D 'New driver!'
You get information about the available PPD files with
poll_ppd_base
If you have one of these nice HP LaserJet 4050N Postscript printers
connected via Ethernet, copy its PPD file from the CD which came with the
printer to the /tmp directory, and do
lpadmin -p lp -E -v socket://192.168.1.100:9100/ \
-P /tmp/lj4050.ppd
to access this printer via the "lp" queue (we assume that the IP of the
printer is 192.168.1.100 and the port is 9100).
After you have found out how nice it is to work with the HP LaserJet 4050N,
you give the good old LaserJet 1100 to your mother-in-law. Now you want to get
rid of the queue for it on your machine. Simply enter
lpadmin -x laserjet
This nice LaserJet 4050N should be the default, no problem:
lpadmin -d lp
Interested? The man page has more:
man lpadmin
Or read the CUPS Software
Administrators Manual.
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All Postscript printers (with hardware Postscript interpreters) are
perfectly supported by CUPS and thus by Linux Mandrake 7.2.
You only need the PPD file of your printer supplied by the printer's
manufacturer. You find this file either on the CDs or floppy disks that came
with the printer (as part of the Windows/Mac OS drivers), or you can download
it from the web site of the printer's manufacturer or from the web site of Adobe.
On Adobe's site all PPDs are in Windows-self-extracting ".EXE"
archives. To uncompress them, enter
unzip -L [filename].EXE
at the command line.
Put the file into the /usr/share/cups/model/ directory or into
one of its subdirectories and restart the CUPS daemon (to rebuild the PPD
database) by entering:
service cups restart
Now you can configure your printer as shown. For the PPD file which you
have copied there will be a new entry in the list of printer models, just
choose it.
When you have installed the new queue, set up the default options for the
printer. Besides the usual things like the paper size and the resolution you
should check whether there is a group of options called "Installed Options" or
similar: here you should enter how much memory your printer has, which
finishers are installed, how many trays there are and so on. This is very
important, otherwise the users cannot take advantage of all the capabilities
the printer offers. If you do not know exactly what is installed in your
printer, you can often print an info page. The appropriate function is either
available via the printer's built-in operation panel or via the printer's web
interface (for Ethernet-connected printers).
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The configuration of the CUPS daemon (broadcasting behavior, directories,
access permissions, and so on) is stored in the file
/etc/cups/cupsd.conf
The entries in this file (which is similar to the configuration file of the
WWW server Apache) are well commented. You can change the entries with any
editor, but when you change something, do not forget to remove the hash mark
("#") at the beginning of the line, otherwise the line will be ignored.
After every change the CUPS daemon has to be restarted, enter
service cups restart
to do so.
A more comfortable, graphical solution is
kupsdconf
The program can be started either by typing kupsdconf at the
command line, by choosing "Configuration"/"Printing"/"kupsdconf" in the
desktop menu, or by choosing "File"/"Configure CUPS daemon" in KUPS. It shows
all the options of the CUPS daemon in a tree view (click on the "CUPS print
system" entry on the left hand side if you do not see any tree). When you
click on "OK" your changes will be saved and the CUPS daemon will be restarted
automatically to activate the changes.
Some hints:
-
"0" for a size or a quantity normally means something special, like
"unlimited" or similar.
-
The line "Printcap /etc/printcap" ('kupsdconf': "Server"/"Misc") lets the
CUPS daemon generate a simple '/etc/printcap' file only containing the names
of the printers. This is necessary for printing from KDE programs and from
many other applications.
-
Usually, the line "FilterLimit 0" ('kupsdconf': "Server"/"Misc") should
allow an unlimited number of print jobs to be done simultaneously. Due to a
bug in CUPS this does not work. Therefore in Linux Mandrake FilterLimit
999999 is used.
-
In Mandrake, ImplicitClasses Off ('kupsdconf': "Browsing") is
set. This means that CUPS does not generate any printer classes automatically.
If you set this options to "On", you automatically get a so-called "implicit"
class for every set of eponymous printers.
Example: You have an Ethernet-connected printer and you define a queue for it
on two servers, on both of them with the name "lp". With ImplicitClasses
On you do not only get the two entries "lp@server1" and "lp@server2",
you also get a class "lp", which forward printing jobs to the first of the two
servers which responds. So you have redundancy: when one of the servers is
down, you print through the other.
-
With BrowsePoll [server] or BrowsePoll
[server]:[port] ('kupsdconf': "Browsing"/"Connection",
[server] can be the name or the IP address of the desired
server), you can poll the printer information from a server which is not in
your local network. So you can also print on printers outside your local
network.
-
With the line BrowseInterval 0 ('kupsdconf':
"Browsing"/"Timeouts"), you can turn off broadcasting of your CUPS daemon. So
other machines running CUPS do not get entries for your local printers and
they will only be available on your machine.
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