Printers

How to add a printer using lprngtool

First make sure you have lprngtool installed on machine your working on.

Adding Printers that are already on the CS Subnet to a local machine: NB: This is assuming: You (the user) have sudo or root access. The machine in question is already on the CS Subnet, either as an ACL or a personal machine getting served from the CS Subnet. If not your not working from the CS Subnet, lprngtool will always display the error message: Error executing command 'lpq -a -s' Get_local_host: hostname 'your_hostname@domain' bad

Open up a terminal and type in lprngtool & Once lprngtool comes up click on View Printcaps At this point, the system printcap file /etc/printcap still should be empty. Click on Add. Select Print Queue in the menu that shows up and click Create A menu with parameters to be filled will appear. Fill these up as follows:

Names (name|alias1|...) -- fill in the canonical name of the printer, for example the name of the printer in Dennis 224 is lp1. Optionally fill out the aliases, separating them with the pipe key. eg. For the printer in Dennis 224 the entry will be: lp1|D224|d224

Comments – fill out a description of the printer (this is optional but can be useful)

Spool directory – (optional) fill out the spooling directory: /var/spool/lpd/%P

Remote host -- for printers owned by the CS department fill in quark.cs.earlham.edu -- for printers controlled by ECS fill in mina.earlham.edu

Remote Queue (default %P) – fill the the printer's queue on the server. The queues are clearly defined for printers on the CS Subnet as lp0, lp1, etc. For ECS (mina) printers, type in %P (the default)

Filter – select IFHP. This should default to something like /usr/lib/ifhp/ifhp. It is advisable to copy the filters used by quark: /usr/libexec/filters/ifhp

Select Printer model and Filter options: -- fill in the appropriate printer model Select LPR Job and Filter Options: -- never mind this

Under Printcap for: select the field Client Only (:client) Under Spool action: select the field Remote Queue or Device (:force_localhost@) Under Printer Type: select Queue

Click ok to create the printcap entry. The following message should appear: PRINTCAP

1. 1. LPRNGTOOL## QUEUE filtertype=IFHP etc etc

sh

Do you want to write this printcap entry? Select Yes

To add a new printer, just proceed as above. Remember to assign a new printqueue to the printer