----- Original Message ---- From: Peter Humphrey <pe...@humphrey.ukfsn.org> To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Sent: Wednesday, January 7, 2009 7:08:12 AM Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Network printing > ---------------------------- > On Tuesday 06 January 2009 18:44:46 BRM wrote: > > 1) Modify '/etc/cups/client.conf' and tell it where the server is. > If I do that, will I lose the ability to connect the printer to the client?
Yes - you lose the ability to connect the printer _directly_ to the client. It is instead connected through the server to the client. This is how CUPS is designed. > Surely, cups ought to be able to operate with more than one server, no? > Otherwise, what do all those offices do that have printers connected to > several workstations and share them all around? They setup a print server to handle the printer. Each client then connects to the print server to gain access to the printer. The print server manages each client and ensures all print jobs get completed. In this case, the CUPS server is the "print server", and the CUPS client is what gives the workstations access to the print server by redirecting the printing back-end as appropriate. > > 2) Configure LP: > > - use lpstat to see the available printers > Do you have a reason for preferring these two programs to the cups Web > interface? Yes. lpstat is a LOCAL command that tells you what printers are available to the local system. The CUPS Web interface only tells you what the CUPS _server_ makes available, and lets you manage print jobs for the printer on the _server_ side, not the client side. > On the client, lpstat lists all four: the laser and the deskjet, each > defined both locally and on the server. I see no reports of any problems. It won't give you any problems. But you need to configure the Workstation/client to only use what is provided by the server. That is the purpose to using CUPS - to centrally locate the printer management so that multiple computers can easily and reliably use the printers. > > - use lpoptions to set the default printer > Is it necessary to declare a default printer to cups? I thought I'd let > applications set their own defaults, so that for instance the Deskjet gets > coloured work and the laser gets word-processor output etc. No, it's not necessary. The system will select a default printer on its own, but it might not be the one you want. This lets you set a system wide default. AFAIK, applications can't really set their own default printer. May be there is a way to do so, but typically applications use the system default. Now if you are scripting some of this stuff, then you could certainly tell your scripts which printer to use - but that's different than applications like OpenOffice or GIMP. > > I believe you only need HPLIP on the server side, not the client side. > > But having it there shouldn't do any harm. > It's installed on the client so that I can print locally until I get network > printing working. I assume that cups on the client will communicate via ipp > with cups on the server, whatever printer driver is installed between cups > and the printer. (I believe that the DJ4260 doesn't use the traditional HP > printer control language, so I'm obliged to use hplip.) That's correct. print command (e.g. lp) -> CUPS Client -> IPP -> CUPS Server -> "Drivers" -> Printer >From what I can see in this new thread this year, you just need to do the >couple steps to make your Workstations work as CUPS Clients by configuring it >as a client and then it should work. When I set up my CUPS server it took me the longest to just get the server working with the printer and a test page printed through the CUPS Web interface. Once I had that working, I just setup the CUPS client.conf per the directions, and all my other Linux systems came on-line with the printer immediately without any problems. I haven't really touched the clients since, though I might need to when I get my Epson printer configured on the CUPS server - just haven't gotten to it yet. The Windows clients came almost as easily - though on Windows you also need a driver; and I've had problems with Vista64 and my printer for that one. Win2k, WinXP were no problem at all. HTH, Ben
