Re: HP DesignJet 750C plotter support?
Hi Matt,
> I work for a small, marine surveying firm that uses the above mentioned
> plotter. I am setting up a potato server to handle various tasks, among
> which should be serving print jobs to the plotter via Samba.
I have a DesignJet 755CM, connected to the network, served by a Debian
server for Windows (Samba), Mac (netatalk) and UNIX (lprng). With a
standard sort of /etc/printcap and /etc/samba/smb.conf, everything works
just fine:
/etc/printcap:
plotter
:rm=plotter
:rp=lp
:sd=/var/spool/lpd/plotter
:mx#0
:sh
Which basically translates to remote machine is plotter (what the
hostname of the printer is), remote printer is called lp, and the
spool directory is /var/spool/lpd/plotter. I don't know what the
last two lines do.
If you were plugging the printer into your Linux machine these lines
would look a little different, but a generic sort of config should
work just fine.
The key is to verify that the printer can print Postscript. If so,
you don't need a filter for Linux -- you can print stuff right to
it. If it doesn't, you'll need a Ghostscript filter. I think the
Windows printing just uses the Printer Command Language (PCL) and
Samba just sends it on through to the printer. Be sure that if your
printer supports both Postscript and PCL that you have it's mode set
to "Auto", which is the HP way of saying "accept either Postscript or
PCL". After that the Windows machines just need the driver. I've
never figured out how to make my Samba server automatically install the
printer drivers on my Windows clients, but I think that is possible.
Here's the relevant sections of my smb.conf.
/etc/samba/smb.conf:
[global]
print command = /usr/bin/lpr -r -P%p %s
lpq command = /usr/bin/lpq -P%p
lprm command = /usr/bin/lprm -P%p %j
load printers = yes
printing = lprng
[printers]
comment = All Printers
path = /tmp
create mask = 0700
guest ok = no
writeable = no
printable = yes
print ok = yes
browseable = yes
I'm not sure if the [printers] section is actually necessary because
it shows up on the Windows machines as well as the individual printers,
but I've never done any experiments to see the effect of removing
it (if it ain't broke. . .).
--
Christopher S. Swingley tel: 907-474-2689 cell: 322-1889
Programmer / Analyst email: cswingle@iarc.uaf.edu
University of Alaska Fairbanks www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle
Fairbanks, AK 99775
PGP2 key: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/pgpkey.asc
GNUPG key: http://www.frontier.iarc.uaf.edu/~cswingle/gnupgkey.asc
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