CUPS
CUPS (Common Unix Printing System) This makes it easy to add printers to your system and programs such as firefox will pick up the printer list automatically.
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Installing CUPS
# pkg_add -r cups
or
# cd /usr/ports/print/cups # make install clean
Install a Parallel Printer
If you use an old parallel printer then you need to do the following before you add the printer through cups:
# chown root:cups /dev/lpt0 # chmod 0660 /dev/lpt0
Now add these lines to /etc/devfs.conf so that the permissions are set during boot time
own /dev/lpt0 root:cups perm /dev/lpt0 0660
Now go back into the cups setup http://localhost:631 and add your printer, you will notice that there is now a Parallel device present.
Installing a PCL printer
If you have a printer which handles PCL but not PS then you need to install the 'hpijs' port
# portinstall -P hpijs
Now you will have a huge list of HP printers to select from, if you have a basic B&W laser printer which accepts PCL then use the 'HP LaserJet 5L Foomatic/hpijs' driver and you shouldn't have a problem.
Printing from Windows XP to a FreeBSD CUPs server
You don't require samba to print from an XP client through a FreeBSD CUPs server to your printer. It's easier to do this without samba actually. It doesn't matter if you have samba installed though.
Simply get your printers working under CUPs and on the local server and test these. Then on the windows box add a new network printer and point that printer to your server by using the URL section of the wizard.
For example
http://<server>:631/printers/<printer name>
Then you will be able to have full rights of that printer on each windows box.
KDE Setup
You can setup any non KDE applications such as Openoffice to use the KDE printer dialogue by setting up the default printer of that applications as:
kprinter -stdin
Openoffice
Change the default printer in openoffice spadmin program
xpdf
Add the following to /usr/X11R6/etc/xpdfrc config file.
psFile "|kprinter -stdin"
CUPS to PDF
CUPS can also be used to print directly from any program to a PDF file.
# pkg_add -r cups-pdf
CUPS mimics lpr
If you have old programs which use lpr to print then you should install CUPS-lpr
# pkg_add -r cups-lpr
CUPS Troubleshooting
CUPS with proxy
Make sure if you run a proxy to set localhost in the exceptions of your browser. Should now be able to connect to http://localhost:631
CUPS and KDE Error
If you get an error in KDE print manager such as: cups host not found.
Then change the host from host: /var/run/cups.sock to host: localhost
CUPS and Gnome Warning
I've installed CUPS on a few machines and found everytime I do I cannot print though any gnome based application. If you like to use gnome applications to print your work, don't install CUPS just use LPD.
programs which crashed right out when printing were: gedit, abiword, gnumeric, inkscape.
Error you will get
(gdb) run
Starting program: /usr/X11R6/bin/gnumeric
Program received signal SIGBUS, Bus error.
[Switching to Thread 3 (LWP 100326)]
0x29dfd450 in ippWriteIO (dst=0x8542000, cb=0x29dfa3bc <httpWrite>,
blocking=1, parent=0x0, ipp=0x8517880) at ipp.c:1418
1418 ipp.c: No such file or directory.
in ipp.c
