What's New in Printing?

This section describes new printing features in the Solaris 8 release.

Solaris Print Manager

Solaris Print Manager is a Java-based graphical user interface that enables you to manage local and remote printer configuration. This tool can be used in the following name service environments: NIS, NIS+, NIS+ with Federated Naming Service (xfn), and files. You must be logged in as superuser to use this tool.

Using Solaris Printer Manager is the preferred method for managing printer configuration information. It is preferred over Admintool: Printers because it centralizes printer information when used in conjunction with a name service. Using a name service for storing printer configuration information is desirable because it makes printer information available to all systems on the network, making printing administration easier.

In this release, you can manage printer configuration information in the NIS+ name service without the underlying xfn application layer with Solaris Printer Manager. This provides better performance when accessing printer configuration information. See "How to Convert Printer Configuration Information in NIS+ (+xfn) to NIS+ Format" for information on converting NIS+ (xfn) printer information to NIS+ printer information.

Solaris Print Manager recognizes existing printer information on the printer servers, print clients, and in the name service databases. There are no conversion tasks required to use the new Solaris Print Manager as long as the print clients are running either the Solaris 2.6 release or compatible versions.

The Solaris Print Manager package is SUNWppm.

Print Naming Enhancement

This Solaris release supports the printers database in /etc/nsswitch.conf, the name service switch file. The printers database provides centralized printer configuration information to print clients on the network.

By including the printers database and corresponding sources of information in the name service switch file, print clients automatically have access to printer configuration information without having to add it to their own systems.

The default printers entry in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file for files, NIS, and NIS+ environments are described in the following table. The nisplus keyword represents the printers.org_dir table. The xfn keyword represents the FNS printer contexts.

For example, if your name service is NIS, printer configuration information on print clients is looked up in the following sources in this order:

• user - Represents the user's $HOME/.printers file

• files - Represents the /etc/printers.conf file

• nis - Represents the printers.conf.byname table

See nsswitch.conf(4) and Solaris Naming Administration Guide for more information.

Enabling or Disabling Banner Page Printing

You can use the lpadmin command to enable or disable system-wide banner page printing in this Solaris release.

You can specify whether a banner page is always printed, never printed, or whether banner page printing is optional with the lpadmin's new -banner option arguments (always, never, and optional). If banner page printing is set to optional, the banner is printed by default, but users can disable banner page printing with the lp -o nobanner command.

See "How to Make Banner Pages Optional" and lpadmin(1M) for more information.