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 Admintool lets you set only some of them when you install or modify a printer. Table 40-1 lists the print definitions and shows whether you can assign the definition with Admintool.

Printer Name

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

• Unique among all printers within the bounds of an administrative domain

• A maximum of 14 alphanumeric characters, which may include dashes and underscores

• Easy to remember and may identify the type of printer, its location, or the print server name

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 PostScript^TM 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 Admintool. 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 Admintool or the lpadmin -p printer-name -v device-name command.

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

With Admintool, you can select either /dev/term/a or /dev/term/b, or choose Other and specify any port name that the print server recognizes. These options give you as much flexibility as the lpadmin command.

The LP print service initializes the printer port using the settings from the standard printer interface program. See "Managing Print Filters" for more information about printer interface programs. 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.

If you use multiple ports on an x86 system microprocessor-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 x86 port configuration files are:

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

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

See the Information Library for Solaris 2.6 (Intel Platform Edition) for information about configuring serial and parallel ports on x86 systems.

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 DECwriter(TM) 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 PostScript printers, such as LaserWriter\256I and LaserWriterII printers.

You can specify the printer type by using the lpadmin -T command or Admintool. With Admintool, you can specify the printer type only when you are installing a printer. If you want to change the type of an existing printer, you must delete the printer and reinstall it by using Admintool, otherwise change the printer type by using the lpadmin command.

Admintool 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   4   7   A   M   a   d   g   j   m   p   s   u   x
2   5   8   B   P   b   e   h   k   n   q   t   v   y
3   6   9   H   S   c   f   i   l   o   r   ti  w   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\256 printer, look in /usr/share/lib/terminfo/e to find your particular model of Epson printer.

$ cd /usr/share/lib/terminfo/e
$ ls
emots        ep2500+high  ep48           ergo4000    exidy2500
env230       ep2500+low   epson250       esprit
envision230  ep40         epson2500-80   ethernet
ep2500+basic ep4000       epson2500-h    ex3000
ep2500+color ep4080       epson2500-hi8  exidy
$ 

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

If you have a NEC\256 printer, look in the /usr/share/lib/terminfo/n directory for your NEC printer model.

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

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