You can use OpenSolaris Print Manager to configure newly discovered directly attached or newly discovered network-attached printers from the desktop. By default, the system automatically discovers directly attached USB printers. The system also discovers network-attached printers, if the network device discovery service has been enabled. See How to Enable the Network Device Discovery Service.
Adding a Directly Attached USB Printer
When a new USB printer is connected to the system and discovered , the Add Printer Queue dialog, populated with printer configuration data, automatically opens on the desktop. From here, you can modify the existing configuration information and then create the new printer queue. After the new printer queue is created, it appears in the Queue pane of the Print Manager window. For more information, see How To Set Up Auto-Discovered Printers by Using the OpenSolaris Print Manager.
Adding a Network-Attached Printer
Network-attached printers are auto-discovered the same way as directly attached printers. This support is designed and implemented through a HAL add-on module, /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-network-discovery. When a new network-attached printer is discovered by the system, a printer queue is automatically created. At the same time, a notification message is displayed next to a printer icon located in the panel notification area of the desktop. Clicking this notification message launches the OpenSolaris Print Manager application. From here, you can view or change the configuration data for the newly discovered network-attached printer. To do so, select the printer queue in the Queue pane of the Print Manager window and choose Properties from the Printer menu. For more information, see How To Set Up Auto-Discovered Printers by Using the OpenSolaris Print Manager.
To utilize the network device discovery feature, the following conditions must be met:
The network device discovery service, network/device-discovery/printers:snmp, must be enabled.
You can enable this service from the desktop or by using SMF commands. For more information, see Managing Network Device Discovery Services (Task Map).
Network-attached printers must support SNMP queries, which means the device must be “known” to the system.
For more information, see How to Determine Which Printers Are Known to the System.
Network-attached printers must be on the same subnet as the system that is querying the network.
The service is not capable of discovering network-attached printers that are more than one hop away.
OpenSolaris Print Manager Preferences for desktop notifications of network printing events must be turned on.
For more information, see Managing Print Manager and Printer Preferences.
In the OpenSolaris 2008.11 release, attempts to enable the HAL add-on module from the desktop or by using SMF commands, cause the system to revert to maintenance state. This problem does not occur if you are running a supported Solaris Express Community Edition release. To enable this service in the OpenSolaris 2008.11 release, you must first install the SUNWSmmgr package. For detailed instructions, go to http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/indiana/resources/relnotes/200811/x86/.