From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Mar 7 11:33:48 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 486EB16A420 for ; Tue, 7 Mar 2006 11:33:48 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from danny@ricin.com) Received: from smtpq3.groni1.gr.home.nl (smtpq3.groni1.gr.home.nl [213.51.130.202]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 85E0F43D60 for ; Tue, 7 Mar 2006 11:33:47 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from danny@ricin.com) Received: from [213.51.130.190] (port=59572 helo=smtp1.groni1.gr.home.nl) by smtpq3.groni1.gr.home.nl with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1FGaRV-00058r-Pm for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Tue, 07 Mar 2006 12:33:29 +0100 Received: from cp464173-a.dbsch1.nb.home.nl ([84.27.215.228]:54043 helo=desktop.homenet) by smtp1.groni1.gr.home.nl with esmtp (Exim 4.30) id 1FGaRY-0005qm-Tv; Tue, 07 Mar 2006 12:33:32 +0100 From: Danny Pansters To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 7 Mar 2006 11:33:02 +0000 User-Agent: KMail/1.9.1 References: <20060307082141.GA13694@thought.org> In-Reply-To: <20060307082141.GA13694@thought.org> X-Face: :N, f2_*44g[tRY8Y-gL2zi`G|<6SpFjTeHt|V5LO6Yl2E7yAfEh{E6-8pqxUFX"l)=?utf-8?q?Nm8y=7E=0A=09IWJSAWQ=7D+=3DpP=7CT=5D?=@sy1sz%h)*CW6gtbp]"fe@MjICtIUo.0, CH~{[R4PXSyL Cc: FreeBSD Mailing List MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline Message-Id: <200603071133.02515.danny@ricin.com> X-AtHome-MailScanner-Information: Please contact support@home.nl for more information X-AtHome-MailScanner: Found to be clean Subject: Re: print question: cups and lpr X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 07 Mar 2006 11:33:48 -0000 On Tuesday 7 March 2006 08:21, Gary Kline wrote: > On my test system I'm defaulting to "cups"; printing on any > flavor of *nix has always been painful ... which is why I > stick with plain ol' lpr::: it Just-Works{tm}. So on my > printserver and everywhere else I have lpr/lpd going. > > Under Gnome on my test platform I've tried to get things to > print via my printsrver. I see that Gnome thinks things are > printing. Not. Do any of you print wizards know what I'm > missing? Usually this is caused by confusion over which lpr to use. The one that comes with base (lpd) is in /usr/bin, the one installed by cups is in /usr/local/bin. When searching $PATH the first will be used, which is the wrong one. IIRC the cups port has a 'make replace' target. Or (what I usually do): cp /usr/bin/lpr /usr/bin/lpr.not and I put NO_LPR=yes in /etc/make.conf so that when rebuilding world all of lpd is skipped. > thanks for any clues, > > gary > > PS: 5 gold stars for anybody who can 'splain why cups exists. Well for just a printer server lpd is fine and maybe easier. But for a desktop where you want a good filter/driver for those shiny PDFs, cups is almost a must. I use a HP all-in-one (and before that an officejet). Good luck writing a printcap for that. Even more so getting a suitable filter. With cups this is automagical, and no sub par quality or bleak colors (well at least with HP's drivers, graphics/hpoj and hpijs). Granted, if you fail to get it running automagically you're in for some reading, but it's well documented. If all you ever do is print plain text then cups may be overkill. Also, cups supports several protocols, most prominently ipp which arguably is the standard now. Since I have my printer hanging on the network this comes in handy. My experience with lpd getting it to print decently with magicfilter on the officejet was always rather painful. Cups just works. It also does scanning and I can read my camera's flash card with it, but that has nothing to do with cups, rather with the device drivers. HTH, Dan