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System Administration Guide: Printing

Adding PPD Files to a System

When you add or modify a printer by using Solaris Print Manager, a PPD cache file, ppdcache, is referenced to display printer driver information. See Description of the Printer Driver Field in Solaris Print Manager. The PPD File Management utility generates the cache file by gathering printer information from the PPD files in all of the PPD file repositories on a system. To reflect any changes that are made in Solaris Print Manager, the PPD cache file must be updated.

You can use the following methods to add a PPD file to a system:

When you add a PPD file to a system by using the ppdmgr utility or the lpadmin -n command, the changes are reflected in Solaris Print Manager. If the PPD file is manually copied to the system or added by using the pkgadd command, you can use the ppdmgr utility to make sure that the new PPD files are reflected in the cache file that is used by Solaris Print Manager.

Using the ppdmgr utility to add a PPD file to the system provides more flexibility because you can specify what label is used and where the file is stored. The -L and -R options of the ppdmgr utility enable you to specify a label and repository of your own choosing. See Specifying a PPD File Label. If you add a PPD files to a system by using the lpadmin -n command or the ppdmgr utility and do not specify a label or repository, the PPD file is stored in the user label directory within the user repository. Similarly, if the source path to the PPD file that you provide is not from an existing PPD file label within an existing PPD file repository on the system, then the file is copied to the user label within the user repository.