FreeBSD 11, Xfce, and printing
Polytropon
freebsd at edvax.de
Mon Jan 23 06:53:25 UTC 2017
On Sun, 22 Jan 2017 19:50:37 -0800, David Christensen wrote:
> I wanted to print a document today. I went looking for:
>
> Application Menu -> Settings -> Printing
>
>
> It does not exist. All I see is:
>
> Application Menu -> Settings -> Xfce 4 Printing System Settings
>
>
> CUPS is missing from the left-hand pane.
Is CUPS installed and enabled?
Open a web broser and go to http://localhost:631, this is the
web configuration interface for CUPS, the preferred method to
interact with the beast. :-)
It seems that Xfce doesn't have a proper integration for CUPS,
at least the FreeBSD version hasn't.
> When I try to print from within LibreOffice Writer, the choices
> available in the Print dialog are not encouraging:
>
> Print to File...
> Generic Printer
This indicates that no printers are configured for your system.
The "generic printer" is the system's default printing queue
which will probably happily accept print jobs, but will not do
anything with them because there is no printer configured. If
you have CUPS installed and enabled, it will take the place of
the system's printing subsystem.
> So, I installed:
>
> xfce4-print
>
>
> Which said:
>
> ===> NOTICE:
>
> This port is deprecated; you may wish to reconsider installing it:
>
> Depends on unmaintained x11-toolkits/libxfce4gui.
Then don't use it. It isn't required anyway. Use the web
interface instead as suggested in the CUPS documentation.
> Application Menu -> Settings -> Printing still does not exist, and the
> LibreOffice Writer Print dialog still does not look encouraging.
OpenOffice has a stand-alone printer management tool symlink
called /usr/local/bin/openoffice.org-3.3.0-spadmin, and
LibreOffice has something similar; search for "spadmin",
that will be the right one.
First configure CUPS using the web interface, then run that
program to make LO aware of the printer. It should work then.
The last time I configured CUPS + LO printing was more than
3 years ago, and I forgot everything... ;-)
> Any suggestions for getting CUPS working?
Allow me to point you to the relevant sources:
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/printing.html
https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/articles/cups/
http://www.wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/lpdprinting.html
(Hopefully) helpful sidenote:
Make yourself familiar with the CUPS commands lpq, lpr, lprm,
cupsaccept, and cupsenable. Check the location of the CUPS
log files in /var/log, especially the error log file. It will
significantly help you at troubleshooting.
What you should get when you've configured everything correctly,
for example:
% lpq
Laserjet is ready
no entries
% lpr import.pdf
% lpq
Laserjet is ready and printing
Rank Owner Job File(s) Total Size
active poly 4929 import.pdf 73728 bytes
The web interface also has the ability to check those (as well
as partial error messages in case the printer doesn't print), but
using the CLI tools is much more convenient.
--
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...
More information about the freebsd-questions
mailing list