[TriLUG] question about redhat-config-printer, lpd, and cups

[Jeremy Portzer]

On Tue, 2003-07-01 at 13:48, Lisa Lorenzin wrote:

> 
> so i poked at the redhat docs[1] (when all else fails, right?) and
> discovered that redhat-config-printer-gui is only for use with lpd.  
> d'oh!  so the obvious solution (to me) is to kill lpd again and use
> lpadmin -d to change the default printer.  which does have the desired
> effect:

Do note that redhat-config-printer GUI was only for LPRng in Red Hat
Linux 7.3, but in RHL 9 it supports both.  (I can't remember what the
status was in 8.0, but there's no real reason to use 8.0 anyway.)

I think in the above discussion you are using 'lpd' where you mean to
say 'LPRng".  

> [root at home7 rc3.d]# lpq
> hp4l is ready
> no entries
> 
> which leads to my questions.  when i changed the default printer setting
> in printconf-gui, the default printer setting in lpq didn't get changed.  
> (and neither did the default setting in lpstat, but i didn't expect it
> to.)  i would have expected that the default printer for lpq would have
> changed to hp4l, but the default printer for lpstat -d would have stayed
> hppsc2210 (since i'd changed and restarted lpd, but hadn't done anything
> to change cups.

Keep in mind that he programs called 'lpr, lpd, lpq' etc refer to
binaries that are provided in both LPRng *and* CUPS, for backwards
compatibility reasons.  In reality they are symlinks to stuff in
/etc/alternatives which then points to the correct binary for whichever
printer suite is active.  You use redhat-switch-printer to switch these
symlinks around to refer to either LPRng or CUPS; they can't refer to
both at the same time.

> and conversely, when i changed the default printer setting with lpadmin
> -d, i don't understand why the default printer for lpd got changed along 
> with the default printer for cups...

I think this all comes from a misunderstanding of what the 'lpr, lpd'
etc. programs do -- they're not part of LPRng only but refer to either
LPRng or CUPS, depending on which is active.  Saying 'the default
printer for lpd' and 'the default printer for CUPS' means the same thing
because lpd is simply a symlink that points to the lpd compatibility
binary that's part of the CUPS suite.

> i figure that's just the way cups does things, and i'll learn more about
> that as i get more familiar with cups.  but what does puzzle me is: if
> redhat-config-printer-gui is only for use with lpd, then why does the
> description field have "Created by redhat-config-printer 0.6.x" in it?  
> since it was defined in cups, i don't understand why redhat-config-printer
> would have anything to do with it.

Which configuration file?  /etc/printcap is edited by both systems, so
it may end up with some comments like that that might not be perfectly
accurate.

> i'd really like to understand what's going on here, since it looks like
> lpd, cups, and redhat-printer-config are more entangled with each other
> than i had thought...

Again, s/lpd/LPRng/

A word to the wise might be that if you're going to use CUPS (which many
recommend) on RHL 7.3:
	* remove (rpm -e) the LPRng RPMs
	* remove (rpm -e) the redhat-config-printer RPMs, since it has no
awareness of or support for CUPS
	* Install cups, run redhat-swithprinter to make sure CUPS is active
	* Administer CUPS via the web interface.

If you want to administer CUPS with redhat-config-printer, you'll need
to upgrade to RHL 9 (or *maybe* 8.0)

--Jeremy


-- 
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| Jeremy Portzer       jeremyp at pobox.com       trilug.org/~jeremy     |
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