System Administration Guide: Advanced Administration

Setting Definitions for Printers

Establishing definitions for the printers on your network is an ongoing task that lets you provide a more effective print environment for users. For example, you can assign parameters for all your site's printers to help users find where a printer is located, or you can define a class of printers to provide the fastest turnaround for print requests.

The lpadmin command lets you set all of the print definitions, while Solaris Print Manager lets you set only some of them when you install or modify a printer. The following table lists the print definitions and shows whether you can assign the definition with Solaris Print Manager.

Table 3–1 Print Definitions Set With Solaris Print Manager

Print Definition 

Can You Set It With Solaris Print Manager? 

Printer name

Yes 

Printer description

Yes 

Printer port

Yes 

Printer type

Yes 

File contents

Yes, but with less functionality than the lpadmin command

Fault notification

Yes, but with less functionality than the lpadmin command

Default printer destination

Yes 

Printing banner pages

Yes, but with less functionality than the lpadmin command

Limiting user access to a printer

Yes, but with less functionality than the lpadmin command

Printer class

No 

Fault recovery

No 

Printer Name

When adding a printer to a system, you specify a printer name for the printer. A printer name must be:

Establish a naming convention that works for your site. For example, if you have different types of printers on the network, including the printer type as part of the printer name can help users choose an appropriate printer. For instance, you could identify PostScriptTM printers with the letters PS. If, however, all of the printers at your site are PostScript printers, you would not need to include the initials PS as part of the printer name.

Printer Description

You can assign a description to a printer by using the lpadmin -D command or Solaris Print Manager. The printer's description should contain information to help users identify the printer. You might include the room number where the printer is located, the type of printer, the manufacturer, or the name of the person to call if there are printing problems.

Users can look at a printer description by using the following command:


$ lpstat -D -p printer-name

Printer Port

When you install a printer or later change its setup, you can specify the device, or the printer port, to which the printer is connected, by using Solaris Print Manager or the lpadmin -p printer-name -v device-name command.

Most systems have two serial ports and a parallel port or USB ports. Unless you add ports, you cannot directly connect more than two serial printers and a parallel or two USB printers to one system.

You can select the following printer port types with Solaris Print Manager. These options give you as much flexibility as the lpadmin command.

Printer Port Type 

Corresponding Device Name Options 

Serial 

/dev/term/a

Serial 

/dev/term/b

Parallel 

/dev/printers/0 —> /dev/ecpp0

USB 

/dev/printers/[1–9]

Specify any port name that the print server recognizes 

Other

The LP print service initializes the printer port using the settings from the standard printer interface program. For more information about printer interface programs, see Managing Print Filters. If you have a parallel printer or a serial printer for which the default settings do not work, see Adjusting Printer Port Characteristics for information about customizing the port settings.


x86 only –

If you use multiple ports on an IA based system, only the first port is enabled by default. The second and any subsequent ports are disabled by default. To use more than one port, you must manually edit the device driver port configuration file for each additional asy (serial) port or lp (parallel) port. The pathnames for the IA port configuration files are:

/platform/i86pc/kernel/drv/asy.conf

/platform/i86pc/kernel/drv/lp.conf


Printer Type

The printer type is a generic name for a type of printer. It identifies the terminfo database entry that contains various control sequences for the printer. By convention, printer type is usually derived from the manufacturer's model name. For example, the printer type name for the DECwriterTM printer is decwriter. However, the common printer type PS does not follow this convention. PS is used as the printer type for many models of PostScriptTM printers, such as Apple LaserWriter®I and Apple LaserWriterII printers.

You can specify the printer type by using the lpadmin -T command or Solaris Print Manager.

Solaris Print Manager lets you select a printer type from a menu or choose Other and specify any printer type in the terminfo database. This provides you as much capability as the lpadmin command.

Printer Names in the terminfo Database

Information about each printer type is stored in the terminfo database (/usr/share/lib/terminfo). This information includes the printer capabilities and initialization control data. The printer you install must correspond to an entry in the terminfo database.


$ pwd
/usr/share/lib/terminfo
$ ls
1  3  5  7  9  B  H  P  a  c  e  g  i  k  m  o  q  s  u  w  y
2  4  6  8  A  G  M  S  b  d  f  h  j  l  n  p  r  t  v  x  z
$ 

Each subdirectory contains compiled database entries for terminals or printers. The entries are organized by the first letter of the printer or terminal type. For example, if you have an Epson® printer, look in the /usr/share/lib/terminfo/e directory to find your particular model of Epson printer.


$ cd /usr/share/lib/terminfo/e
$ ls
emots           ep2500+high   ep48            ergo4000      exidy2500
env230          ep2500+low    epson2500       esprit
envision230     ep40          epson2500-80    ethernet
ep2500+basic    ep4000        epson2500-hi    ex3000
ep2500+color    ep4080        epson2500-hi80  exidy
$ 

The entries for Epson printers are included in the preceding example.

If you have a NEC® printer, look in the /usr/share/lib/terminfo/n directory for your NEC printer model.


$ cd /usr/share/lib/terminfo/n
$ ls
ncr7900        ncr7900iv      netronics      network        nuc
ncr7900-na     ncr7901        netty          netx           nucterm
ncr7900i       nec            netty-Tabs     newhp
ncr7900i-na    net            netty-vi       newhpkeyboard
$ 

The entry in this directory for NEC is included in the preceding example.