Printer Configuration

8.3 Printer Configuration

Printer Configuration The printer configuration tool (printtool) maintains /etc/printcap, print spool directories, and print filters. The filters allow you to print many different types of files, including:

plain text (ASCII) files
PostScript files
TeX .dvi files
GIF, JPEG, TIFF, and other graphics formats
RPMs

Simply printing a GIF or RPM file using lpr does ``the right thing''.

Figure 24:Print Tool

In order to create a new print queue, choose Add. Then, select what type of printer is being added. There are 3 types of printers which can be configured with printtool:

Local: print queues are for printers attached to a printer or serial port on your Red Hat Linux system.
Remote: print queues are attached to a different system which you can access over a TCP/IP network.
SMB: print queues are attached to a different system which uses LAN Manager networking.

Figure 25:Selecting a Printer Type

After choosing the printer type, fill in the following information:

Queue Name: What the queue will be called. Multiple names can be specifed with the | (pipe) character separating entries.
Spool Directory: This is the directory on the local machine where files are stored before printing occurs. Be careful to not have more than one printer queue use a given spool directory.
File Limit: Maximum size print job accepted. A size of 0 indicates no limit should be imposed.

For local printers, the following are also required:

Printer Device: Usually /dev/lp1, the name of the port which the printer is attached to. Serial printers are usually on /dev/ttyS? ports. You will need to manually configure serial parameters.
Input Filter: Filters convert printed files into a format the printer can handle. Press Select to choose the filter which best matches your printer.

Figure 26:Adding a Local Printer

In addition to configuring print queue able to print graphical and PostScript output you can configure a text-only printer, which will only print plain ASCII text. Most printer drivers are also able to print ASCII text without converting to to PostScript first; simply make sure Convert ASCII to PostScript is not checked.

Figure 27:Configuring a Print Filter

For remote printers, fill in the following information:

Remote Host: Hostname of the remote machine hosting the printer.
Remote Queue: Printer queue name of printer on remote machine.

The remote machine must be configured to allow the local machine to print on the desired queue. Typically /etc/hosts.lpd controls this.

Figure 28:Adding a Remote Printer

For SMB printers, fill in the following information:

Printer Server Name: Name of the machine to which the printer you want to use is attached.
Printer Name: Name of the printer on which you want to print.
Printer User: Name of user you must login as to access the printer.
Printer Password: Password (if required) to use the printer. Someone should be able to tell you this if you do not already know it.

Please Note: If you need to use a username and password for an SMB (LAN Manager) print queue, they are stored unencrypted in a local script and must be passed on the command line to the smbclient program. Thus, it is possible for another person to learn the username and password. It is therefore recommended that the username and password for use of the printer not to be the same as that for a user account on the local Red Hat Linux system, so that the only possible security compromise would be unauthorized use of the printer. If there are file shares from the SMB server, it is recommended that they also use a different password than the one for the print queue.

After you have added your print queue, you may need to restart the printer daemon (lpd). To do so, choose Restart lpd from the lpd menu.

You may print a test page for any print queue you have configured. Select the type of test page you would like to print from the Tests menu.

Figure 29:Printing a Test Page