In previous Oracle Solaris releases, the LP print service was the default print service. Starting with the Oracle Solaris 11 release, the LP print service is removed. The default and only available print service in Oracle Solaris 11 is CUPS. If you are performing a fresh installation of Oracle Solaris 11 and have any existing printers that were configured by using the LP print service, you need to reconfigure those printers by using CUPS after the installation.
Switching to the CUPS print environment has resulted in the following changes:
Any existing printers that were configured by using the LP print service will no longer work and must be reconfigured.
You can reconfigure printers by using any one of the following methods:
By using the lpadmin command. For information, see How to Set Up a Printer by Using the lpadmin Command.
By using the CUPS web browser interface at http://localhost:631/help. For information, see Setting Up and Administering Printers by Using the CUPS Web Browser Interface.
By using CUPS Print Manager. For information, see Setting Up Printers by Using CUPS Print Manager.
Printer configuration that was previously stored in the NIS naming service is not used by CUPS. Administrators can share network printers that are configured by using the CUPS shared-printer feature. CUPS auto-discovers printers on a network and enables you to print to these printers without any manual configuration. For information about sharing printers by using CUPS Print Manager, see Remote Server Configuration.
Printers that are configured on a per-user basis in the ~/.printers file no longer work. Printer configuration is managed by using the CUPS web browser interface, the CUPS command-line utilities, or the CUPS Print Manager graphical user interface.
In previous releases, the /etc/printers.conf file contained details about all of the printers that were added by using the LP print service. With the removal of the LP print service in the Oracle Solaris 11 OS, this file still exists under CUPS but contains a summary of the local print queues. After installing the OS, any information about printers that were previously configured by using lp print commands is removed. The resulting behavior is as though these printers were never configured on the system. Any existing printers must be reconfigured by using CUPS. You do not need to delete existing printers prior to reconfiguring these printers by using CUPS. For information about setting up your printing environment to work with CUPS, see How to Set Up Your Printing Environment.