Manufacturer Aliases File

Manufacturer directories, one for each manufacturer, are located in the PPD repositories on a system. When PPD files are added to a system, the manufacturer name that is contained in the PPD file is used to determine which manufacturer directory to copy the PPD file to. A private file, /var/lp/ppd/manufaliases, contains aliases for all the manufacturer entries in a PPD file. The manufaliases file is referenced to determine which manufacturer directory to copy the PPD file to. This process ensures that there is one directory per manufacturer, rather than one directory per manufacturer alias. For example, if a PPD file contains the manufacturer name, Hewlett-Packard, and an HP alias for Hewlett-Packard is listed in the manufaliases file, the PPD file is stored in the HP directory. This strategy applies to all PPD files that are added to a system by using the ppdmgr utility and the lpadmin -n command.

The manufaliases file is a private file. Do not edit this file. Do not build software that relies on the file being in its current location or the data being in its current format.