Printing with Cups Server ZNCUPS

at DESY Zeuthen, the printing system LPRng has been replaced by the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS). The reasons are

• CUPS is better integrated in Linux Desktops like KDE and Gnome, as well as into more and more applications, like OpenOffice, Adobe Reader, etc.

• With CUPS and Samba the Windows users are able to control (cancel,...) their print jobs.
• LPRng is no longer being developed, nor supported.
• printing administration is much easier.

With this change of the printing system, NEW - shorter - printer names have been introduced. Alias names are not supported in CUPS.

Network Printers

• Printer	Model	Duplex	Color	Banner	Transparency	A3	Location	old Name	Printing System	Further Instances
  znbr	HP Laserjet 4050N	no	no	no	no	no	1L05	ps_br	cups
  zncon	HP Laserjet 4100DTN	no	no	no	no	no	Conference Printer	ps_con	cups
  znconc	Xerox Phaser 6250	yes	yes	no	yes	no	Conference Printer	xerocol1	cups
  zncroom	HP Laserjet 4100DTN	yes	no	no	no	no	1LK03	ps_pitz,znpitz	cups
  znecad	HP Laserjet 8150	yes	no	yes	no	yes	1L13	ps_ecad	cups	znecad/A3
  znexps1	HP Laserjet 4250N	no	no	no	no	no	1P04	ps_ts1	cups
  znexps2	HP Laserjet 4250N	yes	no	no	no	no	1P07	ps_ts2	cups
  znld1	HP Laserjet 8150	yes	no	yes	no	no	3L21	ps_ld1	cups	znld1/simplex
  znld2	HP Laserjet 4100DTN	yes	no	yes	no	no	3L51/1	ps_ld2	cups	znld2/simplex
  znle1	HP Laserjet 8150	yes	no	yes	no	yes	1L47	ps_le1	cups	znle1/simplex
  znlo1	HP Laserjet 8150	yes	no	yes	no	yes	2L01	ps_lo1	cups	znlo1/simplex
  znlo1c	Xerox Phaser 6350	yes	yes	yes	yes	no	2L01	ps_col,xerocol	cups	znlo1c/transp, znlo1c/simplex
  znlo2	HP Laserjet 8150	yes	no	yes	no	no	2L01	ps_lo2	cups	znlo2/simplex
  znmcad	HP Laserjet 5Si	yes	no	no	no	yes	1HU01	ps_mcad	cups
  znpd1	HP Laserjet 4250	yes	no	no	no	yes	...		cups
  znrz1	HP Laserjet 8150	yes	no	no	no	no	Computer Centre	ps_rz1	cups	znrz1/simplex
  znrzc	Xerox Phaser 6350	yes	yes	no	yes	no	Computer Centre	xerocol2	cups	znrzc/transp
  pitzcontrol	PitzControl Logbook	no	no	no	no	no	pitz logbook	pitzcontrol	cups	pitzcontrol
  pitzlog	PitzLog Logbook	no	no	no	no	no	pitz logbook	pitzlog	cups	pitzlog

Windows Printing

• printing works both for domain members and guest hosts
  • click "run" in the Startmenu
  • type "\\zncups" 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.

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 ?

• Acrobat Reader

• OpenOffice

• 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?

• Some applications such as acroread do have built in defaults, which cannot be changed permanently by a user. We try to find such programs and adjust the default paper format to be A4

• 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.

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, now it is possible. Please use the special printserver zncupshh.ifh.de.

• With lpstat -h zncupshh.ifh.de -a you can see all HH printers.

• Printing with

  • lp -h zncupshh.ifh.de -d<printer> ... or lpr -H zncupshh.ifh.de -P<printer> ...

• Further options will be ignored.

I'm missing the bannerpage when I print from OpenOffice, what can I do?

• This is a bug in OpenOffice.

• Please print into a file and print the file afterwards. Sorry for that inconvenience.

On SL4 I get the message "unable to print file: client-error-bad-request" ?

• the cups version (> 1.3.4) on the cups server doesn't longer support non-utf8 character sets.

• the default value of the LANG variable on DESY Zeuthen systems is C, which does not work together with the older cups version on SL4

• on SL4 you have to set LANG to an utf-8 charset, i.e. en_US.UTF-8 or en_GB.UTF-8 before running print commands (lp,lpstat,cancel,lpr,lpq,lprm)

• a similar problem was on SL3 systems, but there we could install a workaround

• on SL5 you run into the same trouble if you are not using the default LANG=C or an utf-8 charset.

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.ifh.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 cups to communicate with the server for the current session, you can start the cups-polld manually. Normally it is located in /usr/lib/cups/daemon/. You can start it by typing /usr/lib/cups/daemon/cups-polld zncups.ifh.de 631 30 631 as root. If you do so, there is no need to restart the local cups-server. By default, the printer information are lost 5 minutes after stopping the cups-polld.

• or 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.ifh.de/printers/<printer_name>

without local cups-daemon

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

passing the servername as an argument to the client

Both, lp and lpr, can directly contact a server when you pass the servers name. You do not have to change your local Cups-configuration, but you have to specify the servername again for each printjob. lp:  lpr -H zncups.ifh.de -P ...  lpr:  lp -h zncups.ifh.de -d ... 

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.ifh.de:\
  :rp=<printer_name> 

Known Problems using Cups

• network trouble or problems on the print server can cause an empty printer setup on the clients
• psutils and the CUPS postscript filter are incompatible
• the Acrobat Reader doesn't show full printer (and instances) names on UNIX. You can decide if it is A3, transparency or normal paper queue.
• the newer cups versions reject requests with charsets other than utf-8