[Gllug] samba printers

[Mike Brodbelt]

On Mon, 2001-11-12 at 17:26, Dan Kolb wrote:
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> On Monday 12 Nov 2001 16:30 pm, SteveC wrote:
> > Is it possible to host a networked printer on a Linux box? We have a
> > massive HP4100DLK or something with its own ethernet port. I'd rather not
> > hook it up to the par port. Looking thru howto/faqs this seems like a
> > no-go.
> 
> With quite a lot of network printers, you can talk standard lpr to them - 
> just treat them as a remote printer. You should be able to look a bit more 
> into the exact configuration with the HP JetDirect Admin utility (JetAdmin).

The HP networked printers usually have an lpd implementation on port
515, as you'd expect. They also listen on port 9100 for HP specific
printer protocol requests.

You can set up Samba on your Linux box to share the printer, and to send
received jobs to the lpd implementation on the printer. I've personally
found this to be hassle, and use LPRng, and its companion print filter,
IFHP, which will cheerfully talk the raw HP protocol across the network.

Takes me all of about 5 minutes to add a new printer - turn on, print
config page, add a fixed DHCP lease for the MAC address to dhcpd.conf,
add a printcap entry, add a samba share, forget about it....

An LPRng printcap entry for a 4100 will look something like this:-

LJ4000N:\
  :cm=LaserJet 4000N:\
  :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp0:\
  :lp=192.168.1.100%9100:\
  :sh:sf:\
  :lf=log:af=acct:\
  :if=/usr/libexec/filters/ifhp:\
  :mx=0                         

That's (obviously) a 4000, but it's close enough. The filter can be set
to recognize PostScript and convert to PCL if there's no HW PostScript
on the printer, so *nix users can print easily.

HTH,

Mike.


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