LPR CUPS to Windows server and queue.

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

Hi everyone,

Our office has a lot of printers (label & laser), and sometimes it gets quite hard to configure a new printer in CUPS as most printer manufactures does not provide drivers/ppd for CUPS/LINUX/UNIX.

So we are trying to move to a Windows Print Server and run a Proof of concept. We have a windows server in place now, lets say with name uswin2012.domainname and a printer queue with name usprint-abc . And the printer name is also usprint-abc . usprint-abc is added to CUPS and Windows server as well. I want to lpr on cups and say point to the queue on windows server. So I guess the command for it is -

[root@server1 cups]# lpr -H uswin2012.domainname -P usprint-abc

Is this correct?

Because whenever I enter this, it just stays blank with no result and I have to 'control C' out of it?

usprint-abc is a label printer.

Am I doing something wrong here?

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.

2

Hi.

If  no files are listed on the command-line, lpr reads
       the print file from the standard input.

-- excerpt from man lpr , q.v

In addition, I have had good luck with shared printers on LInux, including:

Brother-HL-2270DW-series accepting requests since Wed 27 Sep 2017 12:36:15 PM CDT
hplj1100 accepting requests since Mon 30 Jan 2017 11:15:44 AM CST
OKI-DATA-CORP-B6300 accepting requests since Mon 18 Sep 2017 10:42:57 AM CDT

The OKI-DATA is very old, and I can still use it.

Best wishes ... cheers, drl

3

There is a quasi-standard for output being sent to a printer: PostScript. Any network printer worth its ink should be able to at least understand (and correctly print) this. Even my Laser printer at home (HP ColorJet 1525) can do PS and it worked out of the box with my Linux laptop and Linux desktop system at home.

I suggest to - instead of introducing a Windows server - buying office printers for professional use. You should have no problems then.

I hope this helps.

bakunin