System Administration Guide: Solaris Printing
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Setting Up Network‐Attached Printers by Using Solaris Print Manager

The following table describes each printer attribute to help you determine the information that is needed to set up a network‐attached printer with Solaris Print Manager.

Printer Definition

Description

Example

Default Setting

Required or Optional?

Printer Name

Name of printer

laser1

N/A

Required to install an attached or network printer and to add access to a printer

Print server

Name of print server

venus

Use localhost for Printer Server attribute check box selected by default

Required to install an attached or network printer and to add access to a printer — This field is filled in by the tool

Description

User defined string

laser printer near breakroom

N/A

Optional

Printer Type

Type of printer

unknown

PostScript

Required to install an attached printer or a network printer without PPD files

File Content Type

Content to be printed

any

PostScript

Required to install an attached printer or a network printer without PPD files

Printer Make

Make of printer

Lexmark

N/A

Required to install an attached printer or a network printer with PPD files

Printer Model

Model of printer

Lexmark Optra E312

N/A

Required to install an attached printer or a network printer with PPD files

Printer Driver

Driver that is used by specifying PPD file

Foomatic/PostScript

N/A

Required to install an attached printer or a network printer with PPD files

Destination

Destination name for the network printer

For examples, see Selecting the Destination Name (Also Called the Network Printer Access Name)

N/A

Required to install a network printer

Protocol

Protocol used to communicate with the printer

TCP, URI

BSD

Required to install a network printer

Fault Notification

Specifies how to notify user of errors

Mail to superuser

Write to superuser

Optional

Default Printer

Identifies the default printer

N/A

N/A

Optional

Banner Page Drop-Down Menu:

  • Always Print Banner

  • User Selectable-Default=on

  • Never Print Banner

Print banner?

Print banner? User selectable option, turned on by default. To turn banner printing off, use lp command with appropriate option.

Never print banner?

N/A

Banner is printed

Banner is printed unless turned off by using lp command with appropriate option

Banner is not printed

Banner page printing turned on by default unless another option is specified within the Solaris Print Manager pull-down menu

User Access List

List of users allowed to print on the print server

rimmer,lister

All users can print

Optional

How to Add a New Network‐Attached Printer by Using Solaris Print Manager

The Use PPD files default attribute in Solaris Print Manage enables you to select the printer make, model, and driver when adding new printer. For more information on this feature, see Administering Printers That Use PPD Files.

This procedure shows you how to add a new network printer by using Solaris Print Manager with the Use PPD files default attribute is selected. To add a new network printer without PPD files, deselect this attribute by removing the checkmark from the check box.

  1. Select the system to be the print server.
  2. Connect the printer to the network. Turn on the power to the printer.

    Consult the printer vendor's installation documentation for information about the hardware switches and cabling requirements.

  3. Start Solaris Print Manager on the print server.

    For instructions, see How to Start Solaris Print Manager.

    In this Solaris release you can specify localhost as the host name in the print system's databases. This modification was added to enable print servers to maintain the same print host name, localhost, independent of the machine host name. This option is the default in Solaris Print Manager. To revert to earlier behavior for this option, deselect the check box. Note that this option applies exclusively to the setup of local print queues. For more information, see Solaris Print Manager Options and Selectable Attributes.

    To set up a local print queue specifying localhost as the host name by using the lpadmin command with the -s option, see How to Use LP Print Commands to Add a Print Queue With localhost Specified as the Host Name.

  4. Select New Network Printer from the Printer menu.

    The New Network Printer window is displayed.

  5. Fill in the required fields with the appropriate information.

    If you need information to complete a field, click the Help button.

    For example, to add a new network printer with PPD files, provide the appropriate information in the following fields:

    Printer Name:
    Description:
    Printer Make:
    Printer Model:
    Printer Driver:
    Fault Notification:
    Destination:
    Protocol:
    Options:
    Default Printer
    Always Use Banner
    User Access List:

    The Printer Server field is filled in by Solaris Print Manager.

    To add a new network printer without PPD files, provide the appropriate information in the following fields:

    Printer Name:
    Description:
    Printer Type:
    File Contents:
    Fault Notification:
    destination:
    Protocol:
    Options:
    Default Printer
    Always Use Banner
    User Access List:

    The Printer Server field is filled in by Solaris Print Manager.

  6. Click OK.
  7. Verify that the printer has been installed. Check for the new printer entry in the Solaris Print Manager main window.
  8. Verify that the printer can print requests.
    $ lp -d printer-name filename
  9. Exit Solaris Print Manager.

    Choose Exit from the Print Manager Menu.

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