As part of a broader organisational restructure, data networking research at Swinburne University of Technology has moved from the Centre for Advanced Internet Architecture (CAIA) to the Internet For Things (I4T) Research Lab.

Although CAIA no longer exists, this website reflects CAIA's activities and outputs between March 2002 and February 2017, and is being maintained as a service to the broader data networking research community.

*NIX Printing at CAIA

Long Instructions

In this section you will find more detailed information about how you can install some of the dependencies listed in the quick instructions (above), as well as instructions on how to manually install the printers on your CUPS-based system. Where the instructions are not provided for your chosen *NIX distribution, please consult appropriate online documentation (Google is your friend) and consider providing notes so that this page can be updated Select your *NIX distribution for a customised set of instructions: PC-BSD Gentoo Linux CUPS CUPS provides a *NIX-based Print Server environment to manage printing on your host/network. On most distributions it is configured to manage printing for the local host, however it can be configured as a single network-based print server for a variety of machines running all operating systems (including Windows) Until 2015, CAIA ran a central CUPS-based Print Server to manage access to printers for CAIA staff and students. However, following the introduction of user-based printing, it has become impossible to provide support for the newer printers via a central server. As such, it is now required for individual *NIX users to install and manage CUPS on their localhost. This page provides instructions on how to configure your local CUPS server to provide support for printing to the CAIA HP LaserJet (located in EN605 and to the Xerox FX ApeosPort-V Swinburne provided virtual printers (located in EN603 and various other locations on campus) The first required task is to install CUPS on your local computer and to configure it to start automatically at system startup. The default CUPS configuration is secured to providing access to printing and management services from the localhost only. As such, you should not have to modify any of the configuration files during the install. Below you will find some instructions on installing CUPS to some *NIX platforms. PC-BSD - CUPS Installation Instructions Under a normal PC-BSD installation, CUPS is already installed and configured to start at system boot. As such, nothing needs to be done Gentoo Linux - CUPS Installation Instructions To install CUPS execute (as root) emerge cups To configure CUPS to start at system start up execute (as root) rc-update add cupsd default To start CUPS immediately execute (as root) /etc/init.d/cupsd start Xerox FX ApeosPort-V Printer Swinburne is currently (as of 2015 deploying a sitewide virtual-printer solution where jobs are queued to a virtual printer rather than a single physical machine. Once the print job is submitted to the virtual printer, users may approach any of the Xerox-based physical printers on campus and choose to release their print jobs for actual printing. This means that if a printer is busy, you can locate a second printer to obtain your print job. Print jobs are released after approaching the printer and scanning your staff/student card on the attached reader. Please follow Swinburne instructions for registering your card and releasing print jobs All print jobs to the Xerox Virtual Printer are sent to the print queue lpd://username@hap-ps07.ds.swin.edu.au/Staff%20Printer, where username is your Swinburne SIMS username. The Xerox printers can accept print jobs in two formats, PostScript and those prepared using the Xerox FX Printer Driver. You must choose one of these options when installing the printer within CUPS. However, you may create two printers within your local CUPS server, both pointing to the same print queue, to allow you to choose which format you would like to generate print jobs in. In the sections below, the advantages and disadvantages of both approaches are outlined Xerox Virtual Printer using the PostScript Driver Advantages Disadvantages Minimal processing on localhost Slower execution of print job as rasterisation happens at printer PPD file specifies all printer features so you can properly configure your printjob around printer capabilities If fonts are not properly embedded in document, can result in unexpected characters being printed   Complex pages may overwhelm resources of the printer-based rasteriser and may fail to print CUPS natively supports PostScript as an output option so no specific driver needs to be installed to make the printer work, however you do need to install the correct PPD (PostScript Printer Definition) file. The PPD file provides information about printer features and capabilities, as well as instruct the PostScript generator how to embed commands to select printer features during generation of the print job. In order to install the PostScript driver for the Xerox Virtual Printer, you will need to first download the C4475.ppd PPD file Printers can be created using the CUPS web interface (http://localhost:631) and clicking on the Administration link, followed by the Add Printer button, you will need to provide your root username and password when requested. When creating a printer, be aware that the Printer Name cannot contain any spaces. When filling in the fields, you should use the following values: Parameter Value URL lpd://username@hap-ps07.ds.swin.edu.au/Staff%20Printer Name Staff_Printer_PS Description Xerox FX ApeosPort-V C4475 PS Location Sitewide Virtual Printer PPD File Browse your file system to locate C4475.ppd Once the printer is installed, you will need to open the Set Default Options page to set your preferred default values. To indicate printer capabilities, please change the default values of the following options: Parameter Value Output Options Finisher Type B Hard Disk Installed Alternatively, you can execute the following command (substituting your username and location of the downloaded C4475.ppd file)at the CLI when you are logged in as root. This command will both install the printer and set the default options correctly   lpadmin -p Staff_Printer_PS -v 'lpd://username@hap-ps07.ds.swin.edu.au/Staff%20Printer' -P '~/Downloads/C4475.ppd' -L 'Sitewide Virtual Printer' -D 'Xerox FX ApeosPort-V C4475 PS' -o 'FXOutputOptions=FinisherTypeSB' -o 'FXHardDisk=True' -E Xerox Virtual Printer using the FX Driver Advantages Disadvantages Faster printing as printer does not need to rasterise the print job Generic driver for all FX printers means you cannot finetune print options for your print job Rasterisation done on localhost - enough resources to ensure job is correctly printed   Prior to installing the printer via CUPS, you will need to first install the Xerox FX CUPS printer driver. This driver may exist as a package/port on your *NIX package management system. If it does, it might be called fxprint, fxlinuxprint, cups-fxprint or cups-fxlinuxprint. If the driver does not exist for your platform, you will need to download and compile the driver from source. The driver source is available at http://download.fujixerox.co.jp/pub/exe/apeosport/c4300series/fxlinuxprint-src-1.0.1.tar.gz (only available at Xerox's Japanese web site because non-Japanese speaking people obviously don't use *NIX) PC-BSD - Xerox FX CUPS Driver Installation Instructions The FX Printer driver can be installed via the FreeBSD Ports tree within PC-BSD. Execute the following instructions (as root) cd /usr/ports/print/cups-fxlinuxprint make make install clean Gentoo Linux - Xerox FX CUPS Driver Installation Instructions The FX Printer driver is not within Gentoo portage, you need to download and compile from source All instructions to be executed (as root) wget http://download.fujixerox.co.jp/pub/exe/apeosport/c4300series/fxlinuxprint-src-1.0.1.tar.gz tar -xzf fxlinuxprint-src-1.0.1.tar.g cd fxlinuxprint-src-1.0.1 ./configure make && make install Once the Xerox FX Driver is installed, you can add the printer, if choosing to install via the CUPS web interface (instructions in previous section) use the following values: Parameter Value URL lpd://username@hap-ps07.ds.swin.edu.au/Staff%20Printer Name Staff_Printer_FX Description Xerox FX ApeosPort-V C4475 FX Location Sitewide Virtual Printer Make FX Model FX Printer Driver for Linux Alternatively, you can install the printer from the command line. To do so, you must first determine where CUPS believes the printer driver is installed. Logged in as root execute: lpinfo -m | grep "FX Printer Driver" The output will list the CUPS driver details, followed by the printer information. The driver details should look something like - FujiXerox/fxlinuxprint.ppd.gz You can now install the printer using the following command (substituting the driver details with the text output in the lpinfo command listed above) lpadmin -p Staff_Printer_FX -v 'lpd://username@hap-ps07.ds.swin.edu.au/Staff%20Printer' -m 'FujiXerox/fxlinuxprint.ppd.gz' -L 'Sitewide Virtual Printer' -D 'Xerox FX ApeosPort-V C4475' -E CAIA HP LaserJet 2055dn Printer in EN605 The HP Laser Printer installed in the CAIA Lab is a HP 2055dn printer. Print jobs should be sent directly to the printer JetDirect queue located at socket://136.186.229.41:9100 Prior to installing the printer via CUPS, you will need to first install the HPLIP CUPS printer driver. This driver should exist as a package/port on your *NIX package management system called either hplip or cups-hplip PC-BSD - HP CUPS Driver Installation Instructions The HP Printer driver can be installed via the FreeBSD Ports tree within PC-BSD. Execute the following instructions (as root) cd /usr/ports/print/hplip make make install clean Gentoo Linux - HP CUPS Driver Installation Instructions All instructions to be executed (as root) emerge hplip Once the HP Driver is installed, you can add the printer, if choosing to install via the CUPS web interface (instructions two sections back) use the following values: Parameter Value URL socket://136.186.229.41:9100 Name CAIA_Printer Description HP LaserJet P2055dn Location CAIA Lab - EN605 Make HP Model HP LaserJet p2055dn pcl3, hpcups 3.14.10 Alternatively, you can install the printer from the command line. To do so, you must first determine where CUPS believes the printer driver is installed. Logged in as root execute: lpinfo -m | grep "2055dn" The output will list the CUPS driver details, followed by the printer information. The driver details should look something like - drv:///hp/hpcups.drv/hp-laserjet_p2055dn-pcl3.ppd You can now install the printer using the following command (substituting the driver details with the text output in the lpinfo command listed above) lpadmin -p CAIA_Printer -v 'socket://136.186.229.41:9100' -m 'drv:///hp/hpcups.drv/hp-laserjet_p2055dn-pcl3.ppd' -L 'CAIA Lab - EN605' -D 'HP LaserJet P2055dn' -E Setting the Default Printer You need to choose one of your printers as the default printer. This can be achieved using the CUPS web interface or alternatively by entering the following command (substituting the printer name with your choice of default printer) when logged in as root lpadmin -d Staff_Printer_PS Other Comments The lpd:// queue for the Xerox Virtual Printer is not the correct mechanism for printing to a Windows Active Directory printer. I have been assured that this queue will be maintained, however the correct mechanism would be to print via Active Directory. It is difficult to configure CUPS to support Active Directory, it is easier to install ntlmaps on your computer to act as a proxy for the Active Directory server. ntlmaps would be configured to present an IPP printer to CUPS and then to securely send the print job to the Active Directory system for printing. This section contains instructions to perform this task, however at present success is patchy and not guaranteed ntlmaps appears to available as a package/port on most *NIX package management systems, you need to download and install the software. Once installed, locate the system configuration file (possibly in /etc/ntlmaps) and make the following changes using your SIMS username and password (Note: since your password will be in the file, you should edit permissions so it is not world readable) Parameter Value PARENT_PROXY hap-ps07.ds.swin.edu.au PARENT_PROXY_PORT 80 NT_DOMAIN swin USER SIMS username PASSWORD SIMS password NT_PART 1 NTLM_FLAGS 07820000 Also note which port the ntlmaps server will be listening on. Then configure ntlmaps to start at system boot and start the daemon You should now confirm that the proxy is functioning correctly by browsing to http://localhost:5865/printers (replacing 5865 with the port number that ntlmaps has been configured to use). You should be able to see the printer and examine the jobs submitted to the Xerox printer queue The following step is where problems are occuring and printing is failing (for me I have success with about one in ten submitted jobs, the remaining jobs dissapear and never reach the print queue) To install the printer, follow the instructions above for installing the Xerox Virtual Printer with either the PostScript or FX drivers but replace the lpd:// print queue with the new proxy based queue (replacing the proxy port number with the configured port number for ntlmaps): ipp://localhost:5865/printers/Staff~20Printer/.printer?waitjob=false