Re: [seul-edu] Networking Printers

[Ryan Booz <ryanbooz@alumni.psu.edu>]

Rob,

I guess I must have missed your earlier posts about your network.  What is it?
Samba based with Windoze computers or all Linux?

I run printing for our whole school which is Samba servered with Win clients.  I
use an old 486 as a printserver for the student lab and school that has various
printers hooked to it and one that is servers via the LAN - an HP 2100N.  I just
use lpr and things have worked great for me so far.  The only thing I have not
tried to do is accounting of sorts, I just log who uses the printers each day to
get an idea of student use, but no knowledge of pages printed.  I have the one
color printer set for only the teachers, and all password checking is done via the
main file/login server.

If this is anything like what you're trying to do, let me know and I'll put my two
cents in.  I often feel like I can't offer much in the group (yet), but thought I
might be able to take a stab at this one.

Ryan Booz
Belleville Mennone School

Robert Maynord wrote:

> Dear Seul Folks:
>
> Well, my network is slowly coming together.  Everyone talks to the web, and
> email works.  Next,  I must set up printing.  I thought you folks might have
> good experiences in this area.  I know there are many ways to go: smpprint,
> lpd, ghostscript, pdq, etc.  However, what I have read seems to advocate the
> use of pdq.
>
> I have started experimenting with pdq, and it prints well  from one machine.
> However, I am still working on the networking aspect (using tcp/Ip static
> addresses).  I have read the Printer How-to docs, and tried various approaches,
> but so far no luck.  Does pdq print to a pdq, or an lpd spooler on the
> remote printing machine?  Do I need to worry about the printcap?  Does samba
> have anything to do with this? Do I need to list all acceptable printing
> machines by machine name in my hosts.lpd file?
>
> Also, the default printer on my applications seems to be set by printcap -- I
> must change them manually.  Any way to pre-set pdq in them?
>
> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated...
>
> Robert Maynord