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In alt.os.linux.slackware, Joost Kremers dared to utter,
> personally, i see no problem in putting off such a switch for a year or
> two

I don't either. I'm a happy user of LPRng. It works good, is easy to
configure (thanks to apsfilter) and has no major problems with it. I
can't see myself switching to CUPS anytime in the near future. Anything
that uses a web browser to do its configuration is, IMO, too
inflexible, poorly conceived, and prone to cause headaches when I wish
to do something the least bit out of the ordinary.

> after two years, when pat will have abandoned LPRng altogether, i will go
> and compile it myself.

Screw that! I'll make a package. :^)

> i'd say four years from now, when development of
> LPRng has stopped altogether, is early enough to start worrying. ;-)

But is it early enough yet to start making preperations to maintain the
LPRng code base yourself?

- --
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise,
Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
Ecclesiastes 7:5
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+Alan Hicks+ wrote:
> can't see myself switching to CUPS anytime in the near future. Anything
> that uses a web browser to do its configuration is, IMO, too
> inflexible, poorly conceived, and prone to cause headaches when I wish
> to do something the least bit out of the ordinary.

but in those cases, you could just manually edit the config files. i get
the impression from CUPS that it is designed to handle everything and
anything printer-related on unix-systems. so it's bound to be very
complicated, and it makes sense that you create an easy way to configure
the most common functions.

>> after two years, when pat will have abandoned LPRng altogether, i will go
>> and compile it myself.
>
> Screw that! I'll make a package. :^)

ok, thanks. ;-)

>> i'd say four years from now, when development of
>> LPRng has stopped altogether, is early enough to start worrying. ;-)
>
> But is it early enough yet to start making preperations to maintain the
> LPRng code base yourself?

nope. but whence the assumption that i have such intentions...? ;-)

--
Joost Kremers joostkremers@yahoo.com
Selbst in die Unterwelt dringt durch Spalten Licht
EN:SiS(9)

Lew Pitcher <Lew.Pitcher@td.com> wrote:
> Rather than get involved in a long (and possibly obtuse) discussion of
> why I have certain requirements, lets just pretend that I want to know
> how to configure CUPS manually. Let's pretend that it's just a foible of
> mine to want to understand how to do this.
>
> If that's not a good enough excuse, let's also pretend that I intend to
> perform some of these configurations in runlevel 1, and want to prebuild
> and/or automate some configurations.

If you have some reasons for not talking about your configurations I could
say some about mine which might or might not resemble your configurations.

I have about 15 machines running Slackware 9.1 in a network. This network
means automounted nfs, nis users and of course print servers. To add
another machine to these I simply boot the hardware off a CD which
contains customized Slackware install scripts to avoid any unnecessary
questions. Two minutes after boot I have answered the questions about the
wanted screen resolution and which IP-address the machine will have, then
the CD is ejected and the installation continues by getting the packages
from an NFS server. 30-45 minutes later the installation is finished. The
machine has booted up to a KDM login screen presenting pictures of
selected nis users.

The packages which has been installed from NFS are the standard Slackware
packages plus a lot of custom packages including software like Matlab and
ddd. Some of the custom packages contain customisations of Slackware to
make it fit in to our network with information about nis, nfs, dns and
printer servers.

I have a printer package which contains /etc/printcap and an install
script which looks like this:

#!/bin/sh

if [ -x /usr/sbin/lpc ]; then
/usr/sbin/checkpc -f
/etc/rc.d/rc.lprng restart
else
chroot . /usr/sbin/checkpc -f
fi

As you might have guessed by now I'm using lprng and I suppose that you
want to know how to do the same with cups. Pointing and clicking in a web
interface might be fun if you only have one machine to worry about, but
with many machines the understanding simple text configuration files are
necessary.

regards Henrik
--
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc2(at)uthyres.com Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
info@webrider.ru remove@emailpromo.biz root@localhost

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micke wrote:
> Lew Pitcher wrote:
>
>
>>The cups install went well, but I couldn't see an easy way to hand
>>configure it.
[snip]
>
> May I give you a little hint?

Please do. Sometimes a hint is all that it takes ;-)

> If you look at the files in /etc/cups then you find a few very useful ones.
> cupsd.conf is the first one to take a close look at. There is a lot of info
> that you need to read, and then according to your needs add/change a few
> lines.

OK, I start with /etc/cups/cupsd.conf

> Then you add one or two lines to client.conf.

and I continue on with /etc/cups/client.conf

> Read the comments in the files
> and you don't need the manual until you have to do some fancy stuff.
> Then you add the printer with a single command (You find that in the docs)

commands like that are good news to me.

> It's in fact not that difficult.

Perfect.

> I had to do it quick at my work at it was done in less then ten minutes.
> The http://localhost:631 is something I never even tried so far but how
> nows, maybee it's an easier way : ) But I prefer not using GUI/links/lynx
> on my servers.
>
> Have fun! and good luck.

I will have fun with this, I promise you <grin>.

Thanks, micke, for the pointers




- --

Lew Pitcher, IT Consultant, Enterprise Data Systems
Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group

(Opinions expressed here are my own, not my employer's)
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Henrik Carlqvist wrote:

> As you might have guessed by now I'm using lprng and I suppose that you
> want to know how to do the same with cups. Pointing and clicking in a web
> interface might be fun if you only have one machine to worry about, but
> with many machines the understanding simple text configuration files are
> necessary.

in case if you assume that cups can't do that: it can. if you have a cups
server, the only steps involved in getting your clients to print are:

1) install cups package on the client
2) set ServerName variable in /etc/cups/client.conf to your cups server
3) this step should be taken care of already: granting access to the cups
server from those given workstations

that's it. no services to run, no fiddling around on each individual
machine.

+Alan Hicks+ wrote:

> Anything
> that uses a web browser to do its configuration is, IMO, too
> inflexible, poorly conceived, and prone to cause headaches when I wish
> to do something the least bit out of the ordinary.


IMO, i tend to completely disagree. before stating why, here's a correction:
cups does NOT require a web browser for its configuration. it's optional.

now, onto the reasons why i disagree, especially in this case. cups web
interface allowes not only for printer configuration, but for basic printer
administration. cups not only works for you and a few of your workstations
plus a printer, but also for larger organizations with tons of printers and
hundreds of workstations. with cups you can have multiple administrators
who can manage those printers from any workstation they please. that's the
true power of web based interfaces: you can go anywhere and manage your
resources. no need for ssh/telnet clients, no need for admin privileges on
a given workstation: just point & click.

yes, it may not give *you* any benefits, but it surely *is* flexibile. it
gives the admins flexibility over how the printers are managed.

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Henrik Carlqvist wrote:
> Lew Pitcher <Lew.Pitcher@td.com> wrote:
>
>>Rather than get involved in a long (and possibly obtuse) discussion of
>>why I have certain requirements, lets just pretend that I
[snip]
>>want to prebuild
>>and/or automate some configurations.

[snip]
> As you might have guessed by now I'm using lprng and I suppose that you
> want to know how to do the same with cups. Pointing and clicking in a web
> interface might be fun if you only have one machine to worry about, but
> with many machines the understanding simple text configuration files are
> necessary.

Bingo!

> regards Henrik


- --

Lew Pitcher, IT Consultant, Enterprise Data Systems
Enterprise Technology Solutions, TD Bank Financial Group

(Opinions expressed here are my own, not my employer's)
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On 2004-09-22, Dominik L. Borkowski <dom@vbi.vt.edu> wrote:
>
> yes, it may not give *you* any benefits, but it surely *is* flexibile. it
> gives the admins flexibility over how the printers are managed.

Well, when I'm the only one managing the printers, I think I want to
receive the benefits therefrom.

Allow me to throw my hat (again) into the LPRng camp. CUPS simply seems
like too much stuff for not enough benefit (for me). Besides, as I've
mentioned before, LPRng, with no configuration whatsoever, can do this:

PRINTER=lp@remote.hp.printer.invalid lpr mypostscript.ps

Can CUPS lpr do that? Not last I looked (which was only a few months
ago).

- --keith

- --
kkeller-usenet@wombat.san-francisco.ca.us
(try just my userid to email me)
AOLSFAQ=http://wombat.san-francisco.ca.us/cgi-bin/fom

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> So, to my question...
>
> Can anyone here point me at a _simple_ CUPS configuration howto
> document? Something aimed at hand-configuration of CUPS, but without the
> volume of the CUPS Software Administrators Manual?
>
>

This probably will not help you at all. So why am I trying? I don't
know.
The only thing that web interface does is (and I'm sure this not
totally correct), configures /etc/cups/printers.conf, copies your
selected printer
(ppd file) into /etc/cups/ppd (or somewhere in /etc/cups can't
remember now),
and writes the /etc/printcap. So basically, if you can learn how to
write the cups printers.conf file by reading the one you've already
configured, you're
99% done. Or is it 1%?

Keith Keller wrote:

> Well, when I'm the only one managing the printers, I think I want to
> receive the benefits therefrom.

cups can be a real life saver, that's why i would recommend it in favour of
lprng. mostly because of the samba+cups combo, which proves to be very
valuable in a mixed environment [or even windows only environment].

> Allow me to throw my hat (again) into the LPRng camp. CUPS simply seems
> like too much stuff for not enough benefit (for me). Besides, as I've
> mentioned before, LPRng, with no configuration whatsoever, can do this:
> PRINTER=lp@remote.hp.printer.invalid lpr mypostscript.ps

i have to say: neat. that's about it.

> Can CUPS lpr do that? Not last I looked (which was only a few months
> ago).

not that i know of; however, do you really use that functionality that
often? i mean having your users spooling directly to a printer rather to a
central print server? i'm sure that functionality is great for quick and
dirty print jobs, but not for any larger amount of printers+workstations,
imho.

ps) to 'advocate' cups a bit more, there is also a nice way of setting up
pdf writing for windows machines, using samba+cups+ghost script. i wrote a
small tutorial on it, if anybody is interested.