Using CUPS in the Solaris OS

Using CUPS in the Solaris OS

Starting with the OpenSolaris 2010.03 release, CUPS replaces the LP print service as the default print service.
By default, CUPS is installed on your system if you are running at least this release.

In the Solaris release CUPS support includes the following components:

• CUPS Web interface
• CUPS graphical user interface (GUI), which is accessible from the GNOME Desktop

What Is CUPS?

The Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS) is a modular, open-source printing system that uses the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) as the basis for managing printers, print requests, and print queues. CUPS has the ability to do the following:

• Enumerate printers (devices)
• Discover and advertise print queues
• Access printer capabilities
• Print to a wide variety of printers
• Integrate with legacy print services
• Encrypt printing communication
• Be managed through a web browser

CUPS uses the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) for managing print jobs, print queues and it adds network printer browsing and PostScript Printer Description-based printing options. CUPS provides a common printing interface across a local network. CUPS also includes support for dynamic printer detection and grouping.

CUPS includes application level interfaces that are used by many key open-source applications and toolkits.On the backend CUPS includes the necessary interfaces for processing annotated raster image format (RIP). Support for this format and these interfaces is integrated into and other key open-source print driver technology. Several printer vendors support or have begun to use these interfaces to support their printers on open-source platforms.

What Are the Differences Between CUPS and the LP Print Service?

CUPS replaces the lpr command with its own command and the LPD printer drivers with its own driver versions. CUPS is similar to LPD in that it uses PostScript as its underlying language for page descriptions.

Support for CUPS in the Solaris OS

The following interfaces were introduced in the Solaris OS to facilitate the use of CUPS:

• print-service

The print-service command provides a mechanism for switching between LP and CUPS print services. Changing the active print service requires that it be run as the root user or a user with “Printer Management” privileges. For more information, see the print-service(1M) man page.

To query the active print service, type:

# print-service -qactive print service: cups

To change the active print service, type:

# print-service -s cups

• Service Management Facility (SMF) services

CUPS services are provided through the introduction of two new SMF services:

svc:/application/cups/scheduler

This service runs the cupsd daemon. This daemon provides basic printing service including, queueing, filtering, spooling, notification, Internet Print Protocol support, device enumeration, web management, and more.

svc:/application/cups/in-lpd

This service runs the cupd-lpd daemon. This daemon provides basic RFC-1179 (LPD protocol) support for the CUPS service.
The Printer Management profile and the solaris.smf.manage.cups authorization enable non-root users to manage these SMF services.

Note that these services are marked as incompatible with their corresponding LP services and will not run if the corresponding LP services are running.

Dynamic Printer Detection

CUPS uses the Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) to detect directly attached USB printers. For the detection of network printers, CUPS...

CUPS broadcasts the printers that are available on the local system to every system that is on the network. 

Printing to a Windows Hosted Printer From CUPS

To print to a Windows hosted printer from CUPS, use the following command to create a print queue:

# lpadmin -p queue-name -v smb:~/~/windows-host/queue...

Or, access the CUPS Web interface

From here, select applications -> system tools -> managing printing from the gnome menus

The CUPS print service uses smbspool(1M) from Samba to communicate with the Windows SMB print server./print-service

Tasks That You Can Perform by Using CUPS

Common tasks that you can perform by using the CUPS GUI or the Web interface include:

• Adding a new USB attached printer
• Adding a new network-attached printer
• Modifying the properties of an existing print queue
• Deleting a print queue

How to Add a New USB Attached Printer From the Desktop

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How to Add a New USB Attached Printer by Using the CUPS Web Interface

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