Planning for Printer Setup

This section provides an overview of planning for printing in the Solaris OS that includes the following information:

• Setting definitions for printers such as printer name, printer description, printer port

• Selecting a printer make, model, and driver

• Determining which PPD file to use

• Selecting a printer type and file content type

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  Note –

  In this release, you cannot assign printer type and file content type with Solaris Print Manager. For information about reverting to previous Solaris Print Manager behavior, see Reverting to Previous Solaris Print Manager Printer Definition Screens.

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• Setting up fault notification and a default printer destination

• Determining whether you want to print banner pages or limit user access to a printer

• Setting up printer classes and fault recovery

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

Printer Name

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

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

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

• Easy to remember and can 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 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 printing problems occur.

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 printer 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.

The LP print service initializes the printer port by 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.

If you use multiple ports on an x86 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

Printer Make

The printer make is the name of the manufacturer of the printer. The printer make is found on the printer itself, and on the packaging materials and documentation that is shipped with the printer.

The following are examples of printer makes that are available in this release:

• Lexmark

• Epson

• Canon

• QMS

• Xerox

Printer Model

Printer manufacturers produce several types and models of printers. The printer model defines the printer precisely. The model is usually stamped on the front or top of the printer. This information is also displayed on the packaging materials and documentation that is shipped with the printer.

The following are examples of printer models that are available in this release:

• Lexmark Optra E312

• Lexmark Z32

• Lexmark 1000

Printer Driver

The printer driver selects the driver to use when printing to the printer. The printer driver is determined when you select the PPD file for the specified printer make and printer model

Printer Type

In this release, you can no longer assign printer type with Solaris Print Manager. Instead, you must select the printer make, model, and driver when adding a new printer or modifying an existing printer by using Solaris Printer Manager. For information about using the printer definitions previously assigned by Solaris Print Manager, see Reverting to Previous Solaris Print Manager Printer Definition Screens.

The printer type is a generic name for a type of printer. Printer type 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 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.

You can specify the printer type by using the lpadmin -T 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.

Selecting a Printer Type

For a local PostScript printer, use a printer type of either PostScript (PS) or Reverse PostScript (PSR). If your printer supports PostScript, choose PS or PSR even if the specific printer type is listed in the terminfo database.

If your PostScript printer prints pages face up, documents appear to be printed backwards, where the first page is at the bottom of the stack and the last page is on the top. If you specify the printer's type as PSR, the LP print service reverses the order of the pages before sending the pages to the printer. The last page is printed first, and the pages are stacked in forward order. However, the LP print service can reliably change the page order only for PostScript files that conform to the Adobe® Technical Note #5001, PostScript Language Document Structuring Conventions Specification, available on the Adobe Developer Relations web site.

If a printer can emulate more than one kind of printer, you can assign several printer types by using the lpadmin -T command. If you specify more than one printer type, the LP print service uses the type that is appropriate for each print request.

You might not find the printer type in the appropriate terminfo directory. The type of printer is not necessarily linked to the manufacturer's name on the printer. For example, for any type of PostScript printer, you can use the PS or PSR entry, found in the /usr/share/lib/terminfo/P directory, instead of an entry specific to manufacturer or product names.

If you have an unusual type of printer, you might need to try different entries before you can determine whether a particular terminfo entry works for your model of printer. If possible, find an entry in the terminfo database that works for your printer. Trying to use an existing entry will be much easier than trying to create an entry. If you have to create your own entry, Adding a terminfo Entry for an Unsupported Printer contains some useful tips.

Selecting a File Content Type

In releases prior to Solaris 9 9/04, Solaris Print Manager provided the following list of file content types, from which you could choose when you installed or modified a local printer. File content type is no longer a printer definition that you can assign with Solaris Print Manager. In this release, you can add a printer with PPD files, selecting printer make, model, and driver, with Solaris Print Manager. When doing so, the recommended file content type is PostScript. This file content type is set by the tool.

If you choose, you can revert to the previous behavior of Solaris Print Manager. For more information, see Reverting to Previous Solaris Print Manager Printer Definition Screens.

If you want to specify file content type when adding a new printer or modifying an existing printer, you must use the lpadmin -I command.

Print filters convert the content type of a file to a content type that is acceptable to the destination printer. The file content type tells the LP print service the type of file contents that can be printed directly, without filtering. To print without filtering, the necessary fonts must also be available in the printer. You must set up and use filtering for other types of files.

Most printers can print the following types of files directly:

• The same type as the printer type. For example, PS for a PostScript printer.

• The simple type. For example, an ASCII text file.

When submitting a file for printing, the user can indicate the content type of the file by using the lp -T content-type command. If no file content type is supplied when the request is submitted, the LP server looks at the first file in the request to determine the content type. If the file begins with ^D%! or %!, the request is considered to contain PostScript^TM data. Otherwise, the request is assumed to contain simple (ASCII) text. The LP print service uses the file content type to determine which filters to use to convert the file contents into a type the printer can handle.

The choices are translated to the names that the LP print service uses. The following table describes the file content types that you can choose with Solaris Print Manager.

Choose the file content type that best matches the printer's capabilities. PostScript, which means filtering is not needed for PostScript files, is the default choice in Solaris Print Manager and is probably correct most of the time.

Frequently Used Printers

This section provides the printer type and file content type for the printers most commonly used with Solaris software. Although not shown, many of these printers can also directly print files with simple content type.

If you have a PostScript printer, use a printer type of PS or PSR and a content type of postscript. PSR reverses the pagination and prints the banner page last.

The following table lists additional non-PostScript printers and shows the printer type to use for configuring each printer. For all these printers, the file content type is simple.

Sun Microsystems does not supply filtering software for the printers listed in the following table, among others. However, you can use unsupported printers if you supply filtering or if the printer can directly print the file content type. If you have questions about any printer for which Sun Microsystems does not supply filters, contact the printer manufacturer.

If you want to set up a printer that is not in the terminfo database, see How to Add a terminfo Entry for an Unsupported Printer.