Network Printing - Please put me out of my misery

[Chris Hill]

On Sat, 22 Jan 2005, Colin J. Raven wrote:

> Damn, I was on the *verge* of heading out next week to buy one of those
> given that I could *not* get my "all-in-one" HP psc2105 to function at
> all. I'd given up after days of struggle since the end didn't seem to
> justify the means. (Windows XP box is pretty much up 24/7 anyway for
> anyone who needs to print)

Colin,

Sorry to throw in late, but I have a (not very similar) HP printer 
that's been working fine and maybe I can help. I assume your psc2105 has 
a JetDirect card (with RJ45 ethernet jack) - I can't really tell from 
the online specs at www.hp.com. If so, have you assigned it an IP 
address? I apologize if this has been answered earlier in the thread, 
just had to point out the obvious.

I don't use cups - cause it looks like a huge pig :^) - but lpr has 
served me well over the years. Under 5.3R, all I had to do was 4.5
things:

1) put
   lpd_enable="YES"
in /etc/rc.conf

1a) Run /usr/sbin/lpd as root, or reboot; your choice.

2) make the name 'snowball' resolve to the printer's IP (because I name 
printers after Devo songs). I used /etc/hosts, but you can run DNS 
locally if you prefer.

3) create an entry in /etc/printcap like so:
lp|snow|snowball|lj|ps|HP ColorLaserJet 4550N:\
         :sh:\
         :sd=/var/spool/output/lpd:\
         :mx#0:\
         :lp=:rm=snowball:rp="auto":

4) create the directory /var/spool/output/lpd and chmod it to 755.

This works fine for printing from Mozilla and Acrobat, as well as 'lpr 
somefile' type stuff.

Hope this helps.

--
Chris Hill               chris at monochrome.org
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