RESOLVED: Printing via USB Port

[Bill Tillman]

--- On Sat, 2/27/10, Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com> wrote:


From: Warren Block <wblock at wonkity.com>
Subject: Re: RESOLVED: Printing via USB Port
To: "Bill Tillman" <btillman99 at yahoo.com>
Cc: "Robert Bonomi" <bonomi at mail.r-bonomi.com>, freebsd-questions at freebsd.org
Date: Saturday, February 27, 2010, 2:26 PM


On Sat, 27 Feb 2010, Bill Tillman wrote:
> Okay guys this is finally working. I found the answer here:
>  
> http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?p=64508
>  
> This didn't come up in my other searches.
> 
> This morning I put in "freebsd hl2040 usb" into my yahoo search and this came up.

Didn't you get my last message yesterday?  It had that very link.
 
> Seems this guy got it to work by using unlpt0 not ulpt0. I had tried this before and was using the ifhp filter but that didn't work.

The printer is not HP or even PCL, so ifhp is likely not the right filter.

> So I did this with /etc/printcap:
>  
> lp|HL2040|Brother HL-2040:\
>         :lp=/dev/unlpt0:\
>         :af=/home/bill/hl1250.ppd:\
>         :if=/usr/local/bin/foomatic-rip:\
>         :lf=/var/log/lpd/hl2040.log:\
>         :sh:sd=/var/spool/lpd/laser:

It was probably the unlpt0 device that cured it.  Could you verify whether the plain lpd entry with the unlpt0 device works?

lp:\
     :lp=/dev/unlpt0:\
     :sh:\
     :mx#0:\
     :sd=/var/spool/lpd/lp:\
     :if=/usr/local/libexec/ps2hl1250: \
     :lf=/var/log/lpd-errs:

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA
 
Sorry to keep beating this dead horse but I forgot to mention that this also means that I didn't need the ppd file either. The ps2hl1250 takes care of everything through ghostscript. One less thing to worry about in the setup.
 
I guess the only thing left to do with this is to figure out an if/then module to decide whether the file is postscript or just plain text and then print just plain text without using the ghostscript portion. The ifhp filter did this and I will look there for ideas. Once in a blue moon I might actually print out some plain text files from one of the FreeBSD severs and I will need this functionality.
 
I'm going to write my HOWTO on this and shutup for now.