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Printing with Cups Server ZNCUPS

The Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) is the central printing system on all UNIX machines at DESY Zeuthen.

Network Printers

Overview Public Printers

• Printer	Model	Duplex	Color	Banner	Transparency	A3	Location	Further Instances	Comments	PPD
  znecad	Ricoh Aficio MP C 3003	yes	yes	no	no	yes	1L13	znecad/A3
  znld1	Ricoh Aficio SP 8300	yes	no	yes	no	no	3L21	znld1/simplex	recycled paper
  znld2	Ricoh Aficio SP 8300	yes	no	yes	no	no	3L51/1	znld2/simplex	white paper
  znldc	Ricoh Aficio MP C 3003	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	3L51		additional: scanner,copier
  znle1	Ricoh Aficio SP 8300	yes	no	yes	no	yes	1L47	znle1/simplex	recycled paper
  znlomc	Ricoh Aficio MP C3003	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	2L30		additional: scanner,copier
  znlo1	Ricoh Aficio SP 8300	yes	no	yes	no	yes	2L30	znlo1/simplex, znlo1/white	recycled (default), Tray3 white paper
  znlo1c	Ricoh Aficio SP C830 DN	yes	yes	yes	no	yes	2L30	znlo1c/A3
  znrz1	Ricoh Aficio SP 8300	yes	no	no	no	no	Computer Centre	znrz1/simplex, znrz1/white	recycled (default) and white paper
  znrzc	Ricoh Aficio MP C3003	yes	yes	no	no	yes	Computer Centre	znrzc/A3	additional: scanner, copier
  znrzo	Ricoh Aficio SP 4210	yes	no	no	no	no	Computer Centre upper flow

Additional Information about Multifunctional Devices

• Multifunctional Devices

Windows Printing

• Printing from guest hosts

• printing for domain members (see also Printing from Windows 7)

  • click "run" in the Startmenu
  • type "\\adzprint" and press Enter. Your PC or notebook will now connect to the print server.
  • choose a printer. double click to add a printer to your host. The printer drivers will be downloaded.
  • go to "Printers and Faxes" in the Startmenu if you want to change the Printers configuration.
  • from now on you can use the chosen printer
• canceling a print job
  • Click on "Printers and Faxes" in the Start menu
  • Double click on the printer holding the print job
  • Click with the Right Mouse Button on the print job you want delete
  • Click on "Cancel"
  • Click on "Yes"
• There are special queues for printing on transparencies or A3-paper without changing the printing preferences.

Please note, to increase the number of copies in application (e.g. Word, Adobe Reader, Acrobat DC ...) go to print menu --> click on Properties and change the number there.

UNIX Printing

• default printer: set LPDEST to your favorite printer
  • default: znlo1 (location: 2L01)
  • zsh:

    • edit $HOME/.zprofile and add or modify the line

      • export LPDEST=your_printer

    • make a new login or run in every window

      • . .zprofile

    • please check your .zshenv too and remove LPDEST entries

  • tcsh:

    • edit $HOME/.login and add or modify the line

      • setenv LPDEST your_printer

    • make a new login or run in every window

      • source .login

    • please check your .cshrc too and remove LPDEST entries

• Printing with the CLI (command line interface)

  • using lpr: lpr -Pprinter myfile

  • using lp: lp -dprinter myfile

• Examining the print queue with the CLI

  • display a specific queue: lpstat -pprinter

  • display all available queues: lpstat -p
  • list all active jobs: lpstat -o
• Cancelling of print jobs with the CLI
  • The CUPS job on the local system gets a job-id which is not suitable for removing a job on the print server. The job-id on the print server is different, it can be displayed using lpstat. After finding out the job-id on the print server you can remove it. Use cancel and no longer lprm for removing your print jobs. Examples:

  • cancel your last job on printer with: cancel printer

  • cancel specific jobs: first get the job-ids using lpstat, afterwards use cancel:

        [myhost] % lpstat -o
         znrz1-31                ottostr        1688576   Thu Jan  4 12:20:51 2007
         znrz1-32                frida         31596544   Thu Jan  4 12:20:55 2007
         znrz1-33                wwinzig        1654900   Thu Jan  4 12:30:57 2007
         znrzc-34                ottostr       61533324   Thu Jan  4 12:32:13 2007
        [myhost] % cancel znrz1-31 znrzc-34

Overview of Cups Printing Options on UNIX

Printing Options are passed to Cups using the -o Option of lp and lpr:

• lpr -o option1=value1 -o option2=value2 [...] file

• lp -o option1=value1 -o option2=value2 [...] file

For more options and additional information see the "Cups Commandline and Options Manual"

Frequently Asked Questions

Which file formats can Cups process ?

• PostScript, PDF, International Text, TIFF, GIF, PNG, JPEG, SUN−Raster and other graphic formats

• CUPS uses the rules in the configuration file /etc/cups/mime.types to determine the MIME type of files to be printed. From the MIME type CUPS is deriving the printing format.

Which applications do offer a tight cups integration on a UNIX system ?

• evince

• LibreOffice

• Gimp
• Firefox/Thunderbird
• ...

How can I select the simplex mode on a duplex printer under UNIX ?

• use option sides=one-sided

• using lpr: lpr -Pprinter -o sides=one-sided myfile

• using lp: lp -d printer -o sides=one-sided myfile

• if a simplex instance exists: lp -d printer/simplex myfile

How can I change personal printer specific option settings?

• Use lpoptions to save personal option settings in ~/.lpoptions. Example: lpoptions -o pagesize=A3 -p znecad

How can I print multiple copies of a document using the CLI?

• lp -n number-of-copies file

Copies are not collated by default. Use the -o Collate=True option to get collated copies:

• lp -n number-of-copies -o Collate=True file

How can I change the layout of the output pages when using N-Up printing?

In order to change the borders around each page, use the -o page-border=value option. Supported borders are:

• none: do not draw a border (default)

• double: draw two hairline borders around each page

• double-thick: draw two 1pt borders around each page

• single: draw one hairline border around each page

• single-thick: draw one 1pt border around each page

Example: lp -o number-up=4 -o page-border=double myfile

In order to change the arrangement of the pages on each output page, use the -o number-up-layout=value option. Possible values are:

• lrtb: Left to right, top to bottom (default)

• lrbt: Left to right, bottom to top

• rlbt: Right to left, bottom to top

• rltb: Right to left, top to bottom

• tblr: Top to bottom, left to right

• tbrl: Top to bottom, right to left

• btlr: Bottom to top, left to right

• btrl: Bottom to top, right to left

Explanation: The default layout is lrtb(Left to right, top to bottom). This means: using a number-up of 4, the first page will be printed on the top-left of the outputpage, the second page will be printed on the top-right, the third page will be printed on the bottem-left and the fourth page on the bottom-right of the outputpage.

Example: lp -o number-up=4 -o number-up-layout=btrl myfile

I do get printouts sometimes in letter format, why A4 is not the default?

• Other applications such as a2ps do not have a default at all but decide the paper format based on the language settings. For a2ps LANG=en_US will select letter format, while LANG=C, LANG=en_GB or LANG=de_DE will force A4 format.

What is the best way to print man pages ?

To print man pages use: man -t <man-doc> | lp ...

How can I print utf-8 encoded text?

To print iso8859-1 characters encoded in utf-8, just print the file as usual. Cups will select the correct filter automatically. If you want to print non-iso8859-1 characters (e.g. Cyrillic or Chinese characters):

• use an utf-8 ready terminal like KDEs konsole or Gnomes gnome-terminal. Xterm does support utf-8 only in conjunction with an ISO10646-1 font, which is not the default!

• set the $LANG - variable: Example: LANG=de_DE.utf-8

• see "man locale" for more information and do have a look at the question above

• print the file using the "-o document-format=text/utf8" option. Example: lpr -Pznlo1 -o document-format=text/utf8 utf8.txt

I'm using psutils (pstops,psnup,psbook). Even though I'm using the option ''sides=two-sided-short-edge'' the output was not arranged in the correct order. What can I do?

• The psutils suite of programs is not compatible with the CUPS postscript processing (filter). It is unmaintained since a long time, therefore improvement of the situation is unlikely.
• With the following command you can bypass the postscript filter

  • lp -o document-format=application/bindshort -dprinter myfile

I'm using psutils (pstops,psnup,psbook). On the Xerox Color Printer I get wrong output with a different font. What can I do?

• the psutils tools caused this problem (see above).
• With the following command you can bypass the postscript filter

  • lp -o document-format=application/bindlong -dprinter myfile

  • or lp -o document-format=application/bindshort -dprinter myfile

Can I change the fontsize when printing ASCII-text?

YES! The size of ASCII-text can be changed by using the cpi (characters per inch) or lpi (lines per inch) options. Unlike Cups-default, the cpi -option will be ignored if both options are present. Default is a value of 80 characters per virtual line in portrait, and 113 characters per virtual line in landscape mode. This means a value of round about 9.7 characters per inch.

I can't print the postscript file. What can I do?

• Please check if it is an eps file. In this case you have to convert into a ps file with ps2ps or convert.

• Check the header of the postscript file. Maybe it is for a special printer hardware.

I'm using ps2pdf, but the generated pdf file was incomplete. What can I do?

• The tools are buggy, try to use epstopdf.

I'm at DESY Hamburg and working on Zeuthen's systems. Is it possible to print on Hamburg printers?

• Yes, it is possible. On http://www-it.desy.de/systems/services/printing/printer.html you can see which cups server (from DESY Hamburg) supports a printer.

• Printing with

  • lp -h <cups server>.desy.de -d<printer> ...

• Further options will be ignored.

I'm missing the bannerpage when I print from OpenOffice,Firefox (e.g. Indigo pages) or evince, what can I do?

• This is a bug in cups or gtk.

• Choose in the Print menu Job and then choose in Add Cover Page
  Before:
  the Banner setup Standard .

Printing from Linux Notebooks

using cups

Use one of the following two methods to let your local cups communicate with our server. Afterwards you can use cups as described above.

use a local cups-daemon

• If you want your Cupsd to communicate with the server permanently, just add the line Browsepoll zncups.zeuthen.desy.de to /etc/cups/cupsd.conf and restart the cups-deamon by typing /etc/init.d/cups restart as root. From now on, the cups-daemon will comunicate with zncups every time cups is started.

• If you just want to add a printer permanently use the usual "add new printer" dialogue and provide the name of the queue which is the printers name and the IP address of the server
• or run as root

  •       lpadmin -p <my_printer_name> -E -v ipp://zncups.zeuthen.desy.de/printers/<printer_name>

bypassing the local cups configuration

• passing the servername to the client
  • by the variable CUPS_SERVER

    •       CUPS_SERVER=zncups.zeuthen.desy.de   # zsh
            lpstat -a                   # to see all printers
            lp -d < printer> ...

  • by an argument

    •       lpstat -h zncups.zeuthen.desy.de -a  # to see all printers
            lp -h zncups.zeuthen.desy.de -d < printer> ...

permanent configuration without local cups-daemon

If you have no local cupsd running, just change the Servername directive in /etc/cups/client.conf to zncups.zeuthen.desy.de

lpr/lp based printing system

• If you work with a lpr/lp based subsystem a printcap entry in your /etc/printcap file would probably look like this:

  <printer_name>:\
  :rm=zncups.zeuthen.desy.de:\
  :rp=<printer_name> 

Adding a Printer in MacOS

• To add a printer open the menu of the system settings and select 'Hardware' and then 'Print&Fax'.

• Go to IP
• In the next window click on the plus symbol ('+') to add a printer and apply the following settings:

      Protocol: IPP
      Address: zncups.zeuthen.desy.de
      Queue: printers/<printer>    (e.g. printers/znlo1c )
      Name: <printer> (e.g. znlo1c)

• After that please click on 'Add'

Known Problems using Cups

• network trouble or problems on the print server can cause a temporary empty printer setup on the clients
• psutils and the CUPS postscript filter are incompatible
• the newer cups versions reject requests with charsets other than utf-8