Re: Departmental printing - LPD or CUPS?
- From: Unruh <unruh-spam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 09 May 2007 16:11:43 GMT
Mike Tomlinson <mike@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
Hi all,
I run a network of machines - about 200 accounts, 50 active users - for
a uni department. Everything (servers and user machines) runs some
flavour of Linux, predominantly Fedora Core. Everything is running well
with the exception of printing.
We used to run a mixed Tru64 UNIX/Linux shop and all user workstations
were in the past configured to print direct to the printers using LPD.
The printers are all HP, all are Postscript, and all have Jetdirect
interfaces. Thus my instinct is very much to keep things simple and use
LPD, making spooling the job of the local workstation and queuing
control the job of the Jetdirect firmware.
Yes. I liked lpd a lot. although the config file was a bit obscure, it just
worked. Cups has yet to achieve that level . It does not just work. It has
millions of very very poorly documented choices. And the web setup does not
allow you to set many of them.
My colleague, however, insists that CUPS is the solution. He likes the
control that the webpage offers, although we hardly use it. I don't
like the fact that print jobs have to travel over the network twice and
that a server and disk space are needed for spooling. We don't need the
No idea what this means. Why does it have to go ever the net twice? lpd
also needs server and spool space. Or do you have a network printer and
were sending directly to it? You can do the same with cups!.
additional printer drivers that CUPS offers as all the printers support
PostScript - i.e. just throw the file at the printer and it prints. Of
course, sometimes we get users trying to print binary files or ASCII
text; the former is fixed by cancelling the print job, the latter by
educating the user in the use of a2ps.
Yes, filtering is much better. Eg send a jpeg at it, or a pdf and it will
convert for you.
In addition, the CUPS server dies occasionally, and when that happens,
no-one can print. I also don't like the way that CUPS advertises itself
so that it appears as a bewildering number of possible print
destinations in desktop printer control-panels or drop-down dialogs for
print destinations. Some of our users select the first one that works,
which may be a laptop for example. Once the user of that laptop shuts
it down and takes it away, we get complaints from the original user that
they can no longer print.
You are setting it up badly. Only the server should be advertising its
printers. The others should not. Tell them not to broadcast their printers.
What I'm asking for is - what do other admins do in similar setups? Any
advice or suggestions please?
Bite the bullet and learn to set up cups. I do not think there is a going
back to lpd.
--
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