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CUPS - Common Unix Printing System
Background Information CUPS is developed and maintained by Easy Software Products, which is co-owned by the author of the book, Mike Sweet.
The complete table of contents for CUPS - Common Unix Printing System, aka "The Octopus Book" can be found here. The CUPS web site also contains errata lists and example code. In addition, Easy Software Products sells a companion CD for the book, only available on their web site.
Who should read it? If you do not use a printer with Unix or Linux, or if you do and you are perfectly happy with the results (maybe because the distro came with all the right stuff pre-installed), this book is not for you.
However, if you are serious about printing, if you are considering replacing the outdated legacy printing system that came with your Unix or Linux or if you are a developer even remotely interested in Linux/Unix printing, this book is for you.
Did I mention that the Octopus Book is also very helpful when it comes to understanding IPP, the Internet Printing Protocol? If you tried to read through all the RFCs on IPP out there and managed to understand IPP afterwards -- congratulations! I tried that, failed, bought the Octopus Book and finally understood.
How will it help users and admins? This book will show you how to install, administer and use CUPS. While the documentation that comes with CUPS is very good already, having everything in one handy package has its advantages, especially as the book goes into more detail than the on-line documentation. In addition, this book will explain to you in great detail how to extend CUPS. If you've ever wanted to be able to directly print some rather unusual file type -- or need a mechanism to create PDF files and email a copy of each PDF whenever you print them to a certain printer, this book will tell you how to do that.Anything for developers? Sure. Complete API documentation with loads of example code. Everything from "How can I add good printing support to my application" to "How do I write a printer driver?" is in there. Likes and dislikes Of course, no book is perfect. This book comes close, but you should know that a lot of it is already available for free on the CUPS web site. It also lacks details on how to rip the old printing system out of your legacy Unix -- but if you've got root, this is something you should know anyhow.
Another thing - it is not as funny as Terry Pratchett. But I can live with that.
As you might have noticed, I really like this book. It definitely made my work much easier -- I work for a manufacturer of (among other things) large printers and this (by now well-worn) book has been granted dedicated space on a very crowded desktop.
You can purchase CUPS - Common Unix Printing System from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
After the story a few days ago about how it was so flexible and could be used for queueing up MP3s etc?
Wah-Lah^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Walla^H^H^H^H^H Viola^H^H^H^H^H Voilà! Instant CUPS book!
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Of course not, god knows that reading a man page or a how-to is much easier than an illustrated bound guide.
What the hell kind of question is this? Of course it makes sense, especially if you don't know much or anything about the software. What do you think that everyone is some kind of "programmer" that will just take the source and read it to find out what it does? Of course not, cups is fairly easy to setup especially with all the gui's to configure it, but that doesn't mean that it wouldn't hurt to read a book on the subject to make it a little easier.
This might shock ya, but it also "makes sense" to click that little "Donate" button on GPL'd software websites. It's not as common on some would let on. Supporting open source is more than just saying "I use open source".
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
We don't need a stinking printing system, remember that all these nifty computers are going to bring us the "Paperless Office"! At least thats what we were told in the 80s.
Trolling is a art,
Everyone has spent the last decade complaining that Community-maintained software has poor or no documentation. A good reason for that is that its more fun to code than to write down in english what you did after the fact. If I have to shell out money to entice somebody to write good documentation for something I use, then I will definitely do it.
CUPS coupled with Samba and OpenLDAP now provides a one-stop replacement for authentication and file/print for most organisations currently running a MS back-end. Great to see some dead treeware on the subject
I must admit, I've never been very good at setting up printers in Unix. If I don't have access to the Redhat printconf gui utility, I'm pretty lost. This is bad considering that I'm a unix admin at heart. I guess I've never really had the need to configure many printers on Unix boxes, and when I do, it is always conveniently enough a RedHat box.
I might just have to pick this book up. Anyone have any other suggestions on how to demystify printing in Unix? I understand how to use the lpr command, and how to kill jobs with lprm and list them with lpstat, but I'm pretty much a noob at configuring printers. A complete guide on how it all works would be nice. I'm pretty sketchy on the whole "filters" idea, and wouldn't know where to start to set up CUPS or LPD if all I had was a command line available.
It has all the low down on saucers as well
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
I hate that CUPS... it's bulky and cumbersome to administer.
I don't have a network of users usually, for occasional printing it's an awfully complex system.
Finally, a non-recursive UNIX acronym!
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
You don't need books about GPL software. Just read the source code. Riiight.
Troll bullshit. Under Red Hat, one fires up the printer control panel, gives the printer a name, selects where the printer is connected (locally, networked, etc.) and selects the printer's make/model if it isn't already autodetected. Hit the "apply" button, and that's it. It couldn't get any easier if the printer bit you on your troll ass.
Another thing - it is not as funny as Terry Pratchett. But I can live with that.
Dude, if you can be as funny as Pratchett while writing about configuring printers then you're definitely in the wrong field.
That's bogus. Anyone who has installed a system on his or her home computer will have root, but nowhere near all of them will know where all the components that have to be ripped out are located. I know I don't.
That said, I suppose replacing a legacy system with CUPS might not be considered on-topic for this book... but there seems to be a niche for more generic books about Unix printing that would cover such things.
CJV
I really like the fact that we could configure and see the status of the printer from a web browser.
Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.
It is more complicated than that, and you know it.
Even under Windows it's not that simple... ok, sure, for the dead simple cases it is, and it's not much harder under *nix with CUPS (AFAIK CUPS doesn't autodetect and autoconfigure, but I haven't hooked up a USB printer to my Linux box to check).
How do you setup a network printer under Windows? No, not a shared printer... one that sits on the network with maybe a little interface box and that's it. It sure as hell wasn't as easy as it should be, and even when you figure it out it doesn't always work. My HP Deskjet will use IPP just fine, from both Win98SE (which was an utter bitch to get working, since MS claims IPP support for Win98SE and then proceeds to avoid actually making it available) and XP (which was confusing to setup properly since the Add Port button is deeply obfusicated). My Canon photoprinter absolutely, positively refuses to play nice with IPP though. So even under Windows it is more complicated than that.
And adding print support in Windows isn't as simple as saying print(mystuff); -- proper printing support is quite a bit more complex. Dunno if CUPS is more or less complex than Win32 services, but I suspect it's a tie.
This isn't a book for average users, it's a book for admins. There are corallarys in every system, be it Windows, Mac (pre OS-X), *nix, mainframe, or whatever... the simple stuff should be simple. The complex stuff, sadly, remains overly complex.
I used to use apsfilter w/ lpd for all my printing needs. Which worked, once it was setup. Though I never did get samba printing exactly correct. It was a bear. It was eaiser to setup sendmail than getting printing working in linux.
Well, a short while ago we picked up a new printer. I was dreading going into apsfilter setup again and wrestling with lpd and all that. I looked around cups' site looking for a decent howto. Nothing for a simple "just do it" documentation. I decided to try out gentoo's site for documentation, which is awsome. Here is an awesome howto for getting cups setup in gentoo. You could probably glean the information for doing it in other distributions also from this howto.
I know a lot of folks get sick of gentoo folks pushing it all the time. But documentation and howto's are one of gentoo's biggest strengths. I really reccomend folks look at the gentoo docs when they are trying to figure something out.
Nope, I don't have any affiliation with gentoo other than a user and the occasional bug reporter.
Norris/Palin 2012
Fact: We deserve leaders who can kick your ass and field dress your carcass.
But those of us who use OS X use CUPS for drinking. Large quantities of Mint Juleps, in particular, this past weekend.
sulli
RTFJ.
Now if only someone would write a book telling me how to get my Lexmark winprinter to work under linux...
There is a lot more to printing than writing device drivers. I've been using CUPS on MacOS X for quite a while, since there are no other drivers for my old Epson 1520. I'm a bit dissatisfied with the color management abilities of CUPS. Sure it has custom color tables, but no real way to integrate with Colorsync or other color profiling systems. I can turn off all color management in CUPS, hoping it prints a relatively neutral profile, and then let Colorsync work it's profile to that, but you don't really get the full dynamic range compared to real official Epson drivers with real official Colorsync. So I'm not even getting as good quality color output and matching as with MacOS 9. Oh well, I suppose I'll have to get a new printer with proper drivers one of these days, but I like my old 4color printer for press proofing, I can't stand 6 or 7 color printer proofs when I'm targeting CMYK film output.
Never knock great documentation. I would have to say that one of the major problems with open source software today is that many of the programs do not have enough great documentation.
-redptam-
A simple question. Why would an OS X user want to use CUPS? I know there's a good reason it is built in, I just haven't found the need to use it yet.
Maybe I'll use it, maybe I won't. I remember thinking "PDF workflow handling in OS X? Why bother?" but it turned out to be a great help when working on newsletters and such and mailing them out from Illustrator.
So if anyone could post a good "5 - Informative" reply to me, I'd love it.
"He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lampposts...for support rather than illumination." - Andrew Lang
Of course not, just download the man pages and print them ou-- oh, right.
I am interested in, have to be at least C.
With Berkeley LPD you can do:
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/sap:\ :if=/usr/local/lib/print-sap-out:\ :af=/var/spool/lpd/sap/acct:\ :lp=/dev/null:\ :bk:sh:mx#0:
sap|write documents to sap-out:\
This sets an input filter on an otherwise dummy printer, which can be a shellscript or whatever executable. It will receive your request data on stdin, and gets args that specify the source host and loginname of the user submitting the request.
The above was in real-life use on a Linux system, the script took the input file and put it on an Intranet website directory as a PDF file. grouped by source system and user.
Now, update the Linux system and we got CUPS insted of lpd. But this simple way of input-filtering printers seems to be gone.... We can still write a backend, but it does not get the originating hostname as a parameter!
How is this solved or worked around?
Printing under linux SUCKS. Make it as easy as windows or setting up a jetdirect and we have something useful for small scall application.
:P
Umm... under Redhat 7.3
As root:
1: run printtool
2: click 'New Printer'
3: click 'Next'
4: Name the Printer
5: click on 'HP JetDirect'
6: Enter IP address
7: Go find Printer driver in List (I use an HP LJ4) so I select HP->LaserJet4->ljet4
8: Click Next
9: Click Finish
10:click Apply,then OK to 'LPD restart' message
11:Select Printer from the list
12:Click on 'Test' then 'US LETTER Postscript Test'
Easy I'm a 12 stepper..
Hell. In windows it is easy too, however you need to create a local TCP/IP port to print to and I don't have those instructions..
Partnership for an idiot free America!
What is missing with regards to printing in unix is something better that the standard (unfortunately), ultra primitive printer options dialog box given to the user, i.e. a prompt asking for your favourite lpr command.
When I select File->Print in an application in X I should be presented with a dialog box with access to all the selected printer's specific options (for instance print on both sides, etc). As long as this is not the case printing in unix sucks, although with CUPS it sucks less :)
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
Are you sure? In the US, copyrights stay in force until something like 50 years after the death of the author. But religious people believe that god wrote the bible, and they certainly don't believe that god is dead.
There could be a BIG lawsuit coming out of this.