Basic Printing on OpenBSD (opens in new tab)

(paedubucher.ch)

58 pointspaedubucher5y ago27 comments

27 comments

17 comments · 3 top-level

tehabe5y ago· 10 in thread

I remember lpd with some horror and was very glad when CUPS came along, made printing on Linux even easier than on Windows.

tyingq5y ago

Printing in Windows is frustrating because the printer manufacturers insist on including their shite user space tools. It's often difficult to get "just the driver, thank you" without all the cruft.

The Windows driver setup seems fairly rich and well done otherwise. Though I do have to occasionally run services.msc to bounce the spooler when it has a stale idea of printer state...like "out of paper".

tonyedgecombe5y ago

Often you can unzip them and look for a subfolder containing the .inf files and install those directly.

1 more reply

sebazzz5y ago

> Though I do have to occasionally run services.msc to bounce the spooler when it has a stale idea of printer state...

Especially for networked printers that is annoying! If I forgot to turn on my printer it always needs this trickery to get Windows to realise I've now actually turned it on.

1 more reply

asveikau5y ago

I feel like lpd is quite a bit simpler than cups and I still use it.

juped5y ago

If I had to use CUPS to print from a printer, I would get rid of the printer.

pfortuny5y ago

I’m totally amazed: at my Dpt. people (windows) have to print using a specific driver because otherwise they “cannot”. Their prints get logged (uid).

I just lpr and that is it. Log: “user”.... It is a postscript printer.

Sometimes they cannot print because the authentication server is down...

paedubucherOP5y ago

I recently also suffered through some horrors with Cups. A new version was released, and old drivers didn't work together with it. And the manufacturer (Samsung, which sold its printer business to HP) didn't provide updated drivers, of course. So I'm happy to have some reliable facility to at least print PostScript. But Cups is fine if you get a proper and current driver for your printer.

tyingq5y ago

I imagine being a CUPS maintainer is not a good experience. They did something great, but probably only hear from end users when they are frustrated and not inclined to be civil.

1 more reply

mekster5y ago

That's not just cups but for every other printer/environment when a product loses support.

dn35005y ago

Maybe it's better now, but CUPS used to be a nightmare. I still avoid it whenever possible. Eric Raymond did a good job of describing just how bad it was.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html

tyingq5y ago· 3 in thread

Brings back memories of trying to get HPGL, PCL, or other non-postscript printers working with various flavors of Unix, lpd filter scripts, trying to get a form feed to spit out the paper, etc. Pretty sure there's an ugly Perl script of mine still doing this at a previous employer.

My friends and I used to create a little mayhem sending bursts of form feeds to the DEC band printer in the lab when the teacher was near it. It would shoot out paper 5 feet or so.

paedubucherOP5y ago

Reminds me a bit of the prank they played at AT&T by sending reverse form feeds to the printer, so that the victim had to insert the paper afresh.

cogburnd025y ago

> reverse form feeds

A form feed is 0x0C or ^L in ASCII. What the heck is a reverse form feed?

2 more replies

znpy5y ago

It brought me memories of being 15 and hooking up a parallel (lpt) epson printer (a miniplotter really) to a netbsd machine, failing miserably and failing miserably.

Text printed fine (mostly), anything else resulted in pages and pages of ascii characters (lol).

accrual5y ago· 1 in thread

One small item that may make setup a little easier:

    # echo 'lpd_flags=""' >> /etc/rc.conf.local
    # /etc/rc.d/lpd restart

Can be replaced with rcctl(8):

    # rcctl enable lpd
    # rcctl restart lpd

paedubucherOP5y ago

Thanks for pointing this out! rcctl was added for OpenBSD 5.7, the manpage says. Absolute OpenBSD 2nd edition is older than that.

I'll update accordingly!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

27 comments

17 comments · 3 top-level

tehabe5y ago· 10 in thread

I remember lpd with some horror and was very glad when CUPS came along, made printing on Linux even easier than on Windows.

tyingq5y ago

Printing in Windows is frustrating because the printer manufacturers insist on including their shite user space tools. It's often difficult to get "just the driver, thank you" without all the cruft.

tonyedgecombe5y ago

Often you can unzip them and look for a subfolder containing the .inf files and install those directly.

1 more reply

sebazzz5y ago

> Though I do have to occasionally run services.msc to bounce the spooler when it has a stale idea of printer state...

Especially for networked printers that is annoying! If I forgot to turn on my printer it always needs this trickery to get Windows to realise I've now actually turned it on.

1 more reply

asveikau5y ago

I feel like lpd is quite a bit simpler than cups and I still use it.

juped5y ago

If I had to use CUPS to print from a printer, I would get rid of the printer.

pfortuny5y ago

I’m totally amazed: at my Dpt. people (windows) have to print using a specific driver because otherwise they “cannot”. Their prints get logged (uid).

I just lpr and that is it. Log: “user”.... It is a postscript printer.

Sometimes they cannot print because the authentication server is down...

paedubucherOP5y ago

tyingq5y ago

I imagine being a CUPS maintainer is not a good experience. They did something great, but probably only hear from end users when they are frustrated and not inclined to be civil.

1 more reply

mekster5y ago

That's not just cups but for every other printer/environment when a product loses support.

dn35005y ago

Maybe it's better now, but CUPS used to be a nightmare. I still avoid it whenever possible. Eric Raymond did a good job of describing just how bad it was.

http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horror.html

tyingq5y ago· 3 in thread

My friends and I used to create a little mayhem sending bursts of form feeds to the DEC band printer in the lab when the teacher was near it. It would shoot out paper 5 feet or so.

paedubucherOP5y ago

Reminds me a bit of the prank they played at AT&T by sending reverse form feeds to the printer, so that the victim had to insert the paper afresh.

cogburnd025y ago

> reverse form feeds

A form feed is 0x0C or ^L in ASCII. What the heck is a reverse form feed?

2 more replies

znpy5y ago

It brought me memories of being 15 and hooking up a parallel (lpt) epson printer (a miniplotter really) to a netbsd machine, failing miserably and failing miserably.

Text printed fine (mostly), anything else resulted in pages and pages of ascii characters (lol).

accrual5y ago· 1 in thread

One small item that may make setup a little easier:

    # echo 'lpd_flags=""' >> /etc/rc.conf.local
    # /etc/rc.d/lpd restart

Can be replaced with rcctl(8):

    # rcctl enable lpd
    # rcctl restart lpd

paedubucherOP5y ago

Thanks for pointing this out! rcctl was added for OpenBSD 5.7, the manpage says. Absolute OpenBSD 2nd edition is older than that.

I'll update accordingly!

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse