print question: cups and lpr

[Gary Kline]

On Tue, Mar 07, 2006 at 11:33:02AM +0000, Danny Pansters wrote:
> On Tuesday 7 March 2006 08:21, Gary Kline wrote:
> >         On my test system  I'm defaulting to "cups"; printing on any
> >         flavor of *nix has always been painful ... which is why I
> >         stick with plain ol' lpr::: it Just-Works{tm}.  So on my
> >         printserver and everywhere else I have lpr/lpd going.
> >
> >         Under Gnome on my test platform I've tried to get things to
> >         print via my printsrver.  I see that Gnome thinks things are
> >         printing.  Not.  Do any of you print wizards know what I'm
> >         missing?
> 
> Usually this is caused by confusion over which lpr to use. The one that comes 
> with base (lpd) is in /usr/bin, the one installed by cups is 
> in /usr/local/bin. When searching $PATH the first will be used, which is the 
> wrong one. IIRC the cups port has a 'make replace' target. Or (what I usually 
> do): cp /usr/bin/lpr /usr/bin/lpr.not and I put NO_LPR=yes in /etc/make.conf 
> so that when rebuilding world all of lpd is skipped.



	Are you saying that, in effect, I should use cups on my
	printserver?  --or at least use the cups lpr?


> 
> > 	PS:  5 gold stars for anybody who can 'splain why cups exists.
> 
> Well for just a printer server lpd is fine and maybe easier. But for a desktop 
> where you want a good filter/driver for those shiny PDFs, cups is almost a 
> must. I use a HP all-in-one (and before that an officejet). Good luck writing 
> a printcap for that. Even more so getting a suitable filter. With cups this 
> is automagical, and no sub par quality or bleak colors (well at least with 
> HP's drivers, graphics/hpoj and hpijs). Granted, if you fail to get it 
> running automagically you're in for some reading, but it's well documented. 
> If all you ever do is print plain text then cups may be overkill.


	I've got the ghostscript stuff set up for my HP Deskjet-500
	(still using since 1992).  lpr -> hpif (I think); hpif calls
	the ghostscript tools and I can print anything. Postscript,
	pdf, graphics, OO files, whatever.  

> 
> Also, cups supports several protocols, most prominently ipp which arguably is 
> the standard now. Since I have my printer hanging on the network this comes 
> in handy. 
> 
> My experience with lpd getting it to print decently with magicfilter on the 
> officejet was always rather painful. Cups just works. It also does scanning 
> and I can read my camera's flash card with it, but that has nothing to do 
> with cups, rather with the device drivers.
> 
> HTH,
> 
	A little, thanks.  If I use the cups lpr on my printserver,
	will/(*should*) my test server with Gnome and cups just-work,
	or is that a black-hole question?  Are there are cups type
	tutorials around?  I haven't googled around.

	The nutshell of it is that when I first started messing with
	SVR2 in 1986 (then SVR4, then FreeBSD) it took weeks (totaled)
	to get things-printer working with lpr/lpd.  It's time to get
	out of my Ludditeism and move to CUPS. 

	gary



-- 
   Gary Kline     kline at thought.org   www.thought.org     Public service Unix