On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 17:56:14 -0500 Ed Ahlsen-Girard <eagir...@cox.net>
wrote:
> On Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:19:23 -0500
> Todd Alan Smith <tas-misc-open...@puesnada.us> wrote:
>
> > On Sat, Apr 24, 2010 at 3:47 PM, Ed Ahlsen-Girard <eagir...@cox.net>
> > wrote:
> > > I'm looking specifically ay how to print to a USB printer that is
> > > hanging off an XP box.
> >
> > Then why didn't you mention that in your first post?
>
> Because I wanted the more general information.
Printing is one of those "Black Magic" topics where the people who know
it think it's easy, and the people who don't know it cower in fear. In
your case, you've got four options:
1.) If supported by the printer, attach the printer to the network.
2.) Use a "print sever" device to attach the USB/parallel printer to
your network.
3.) Use windows file/printer sharing and samba to access it.
4.) Use LPR Service on windows, but be cautious about pass-through
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/150930
There's also a the fifth option of attaching the printer directly to
your UNIX box (parallel, serial, or USB), but that was outside of your
request, and often requires packages to get non-postscript printers
working correctly.
The first option above is usually the easiest, particularly if the
printer understands postscript. The first two requirements for
purchasing a printer should be supporting postscript, and having a
network connection. Unfortunately, most consumer-level printers do not
have these options.
If you have consumer-level junk, then an option is a cheap "print
server" device. These typically have an RJ-45 (either 10Mbit or
10/100Mbit) along with one or more parallel, serial and USB ports. It's
a nice answer if you don't want a workstation running all the time and
they typically provide LPD and ms-windows shares.
The third option is use a workstation running windows along with
windows print/file sharing. On the unix side, use samba to access the
share. You may or may not need additional packages depending on the
printer itself.
The last option is using the microsoft "LPD Service" but you need to be
cautious about how it is configured. At times, windows makes the wrong
decision and actually prints the raw postscript text out. It really
depends on how the LPD client is sending data to the LPD Service, and
some LPD clients are not very standards compliant.
Considering all the strange consumer-level devices out there, and all
the vendor provided crapware they often require to run correctly, the
topic is difficult to cover beyond the basics above. You might need
packages like CUPS, apsfilter, enscript, ghostscript, and others to get
consumer-level printers working correctly regardless of how they are
connected. --Avoiding this nonsense is why network and postscript
support in the printer is *REALLY* desirable.
Lastly, if you want to use a windows client system with a networked
LPD-only printer (e.g. no "windows shares"), configuring windows is
entirely anti-intuitive. You have to select "local printer" then "add
port" and then fill in the details, even though the printer is not
"local" by any stretch of the imagination.
jcr
--
The OpenBSD Journal - http://www.undeadly.org
