636Part VRunning ServersCommon UNIX Printing Service (CUPS) CUPS (My web site)
636Part VRunning ServersCommon UNIX Printing Service (CUPS) CUPS has become the standard for printing from Linux and other UNIX-like operatingsystems. It was designed to meet today s needs for standardized printer definitionsand sharing on IP-based networks (as most computer networks are today). Nearlyevery Linux distribution today comes with CUPS as its printing service. Here aresome of the service s features: .IPP At its heart, CUPS is based on the Internet Printing Protocol (www.pwg. org/ipp), a standard that was created to simplify how printers can be sharedover IP networks. In the IPP model, printer servers and clients who want toprint can exchange information about the model and features of a printer usingHTTP (that is, Web content) protocol. A server could also broadcast the avail- ability of a printer so a printing client could easily find a list of locally availableprinters. .Drivers CUPS also standardized how printer drivers are created. The ideawas to have a common format that could be used by printer manufacturers sothat a driver could work across all different types of UNIX systems. That way, amanufacturer only had to create the driver once to work for Linux, Mac OS X, and a variety of UNIX derivatives. .Printer classes You can use printer classes to create multiple print serverentries that point to the same printer or one print server entry that points tomultiple printers. In the first case, multiple entries could each allow differentoptions (such as pointing to a particular paper tray or printing with certaincharacter sizes or margins). In the second case, you could have a pool of print- ers so that printing is distributed, decreasing the occurrence of congested printqueues often caused by a malfunctioning printer or a printer that is dealingwith very large documents. .UNIX print commands To integrate into Linux and other UNIX environments, CUPS offers versions of standard commands for printing and managing printersthat have been traditionally offered with UNIX systems. Many Linux distributions come with simplified methods of configuring CUPS print- ers. Here are two examples: .In Fedora and other Red Hat Linux systems, the Printer Configuration window(system-config-printercommand) enables you to configure printers thatuse the CUPS facility. .In SUSE, the YaST facility includes a printer configuration module. From theYaST Control Center select Hardware.Printer. For distributions that don t have their own printer configuration tools, there areseveral ways to configure CUPS using tools that aren t specific to a Linux distribu- tion. Here are a couple of them:
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