Network Printing recommendations please

[Chuck Swiger]

On Mar 8, 2007, at 1:02 PM, Andy Kendall wrote:
[ ...and... ]
On Mar 8, 2007, at 1:27 PM, Andy Kendall wrote:
> I've just built my 6v2 box and all is going well so far. I've read the
> manual and understand LPD and directly attached printers. The  
> manual however
> is pretty minimal when it comes to network-based printers,  
> (netprint), and
> only mentions LPRng and CUPS on a single page briefly. I understand  
> this;
> it's probably because they're not direct FreeBSD products but this  
> doesn't
> help a newb-to-FreeBSD like me. I only want to build the foundation  
> system
> once, so, any recommendations please on what to install/configure?  
> (Hope
> this doesn't start a bikeshed).

You can use the stock lpd to print to remote/network-attached  
printers just fine-- use the rm and rp arguments in printcap to  
specify the remote printer's hostname (or IP address, possibly [1])  
and spoolname...for JetDirect printers, use "lp" as the spool name,  
IIRC.  See:

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/printing- 
advanced.html#PRINTING-ADVANCED-NETWORK-RM

Some other people seem to be happy with CUPS, and I believe MacOS X  
adopted CUPS as well rather than the classic lpd.  I've never been a  
big fan of turning electronic documents into dead trees myself, so I  
don't have strong recommendations for one versus the other.

> Apologies if this is the wrong forum or invalid posting, please  
> advise.

This is the right forum, and welcome.  One might wish to be a bit  
more patient about receiving replies, however, at least if you  
intended to repost so quickly....

-- 
-Chuck

[1]: Some flavors of Unix insist upon having printer hostnames being  
well-defined in DNS or /etc/hosts, and do not support IP addresses in  
printcap.  I don't recall whether than limitation is present in  
FreeBSD, or just a legacy from platforms like AIX or SCO....