One Year Later - CUPS Admin Still Lacking?

DopeyDad asks: "OK, it was close to a year ago (Eric's site says July 2004, but I'd swear the original rant came earlier last year) that Eric Raymond's tirade on the unfriendly status of configuring the CUPS printing system on Linux was published. Well, I've been struggling with setting up a new laptop and getting it to talk to my print server, using Fedora Core 3, and nothing seems to have changed -- the admin items for adding a printer are exactly as Eric described them back then -- unclear, confusing, and no where near as friendly as their Win* equivalents. Definitely not something I'd expect my Aunt Ethel to be able to figure out. What's going on here? Granted, FC3 is ready to be replaced, but I don't see any CUPS updates for it. Is work being done with CUPS to address Eric's original complaints, or has this issue fallen off the radar?" For those who are still frustrated with the CUPS GUI, how would you improve it?

Reference

[MrNonchalant]

The article that is referenced is here:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cups-horr or.html

Configuring CUPS

[jimpop]

forgoet the CUPS application tools, user http://localhost:631. The www interface at least works all the time.

KDE Interface to CUPS configuration...

[Anonymous Coward]

KDE's control panel offers a very nice UI for CUPS administration. It's not as simplistic as the Mac OS/X one, but nearly as easy to use (and, in some cases, much more convenient -- it's much more flexible).

Of course, round here, we've been distributing printer CUPS configuration via RPM (URPMI). Most user's don't even need to know there's a way to configure the printers -- they just magically appear.

CUPS on FC4 test 2

[taquitosgmail.com]

Works like a charm in FC4 Test 2. I just plugged in a hp deskjet 3845, pressed print, and it worked. (not to mention Win* needs the HP print system programs to run this)

CUPS

[loginx]

The built-in admin web-interface to set up cups is really just there so that an admin with no desktop can configure their print server.

If you are an end-user, it is implied that you should be using desktop tools to accomplish this.

Both Gnome and KDE offer very nifty printer configuration apps that will take care of setting up CUPS for you. Gnome uses gnome-cups-manager (run that from your terminal or create a launcher), while KDE uses kprinter (you can also run it from the terminal and create a shortcut).

It is also worth mentioning that when you hit print on Mozilla Firefox, you can hit "Properties" for the printer in the print dialog and change the "Print Command" line to KPrinter to let it handle the printing in a much less convoluted way.

Opposite experience from ESR

[dominator]

Using the FC3 printer configuration tool, I checked the "share this printer" box. It asked me to give the printer a name, which I did.

I went downstairs to my GF's Powerbook running OSX 10.3.x and told it that I would like to add a network printer. It found the printer that I had created. I clicked "print a test page" and everything "just worked." I don't see how it could get much easier.

Or Ubuntu

[slashdevnull]

Like everything else in Ubuntu, I had no problem configuring printers in CUPS. This is mainly because the web interface tells you to use gnome-cups-manager, and even tells you where it is in the system's menu structure. Really user friendly.

How 'bout the book?

[TVmisGuided]

Not long ago, there was a Slashdot review [slashdot.org] of a certain book [oreilly.com], which included a chapter on CUPS that can be downloaded for free [oreilly.com] (can't beat that price!). It seems to demystify the entire process of administering CUPS.

Five cents, please...(that's about all my opinion is worth these days)

Re:It has little to do with CUPS itself.

[LWATCDR]

Yea Suse worked for me AFTER I tracked down a PPD file for my printer. The problem is it still takes too much fiddling around to make it work. I had to find the windows PPD, on the Xerox website, which was in a windows self extracting zip.

Re:Wonder why?

[c0d3h4x0r]

Well, so much for ESR tirades motivating the development of user-friendly software. Anyone else have any ideas?

Yeah... try paying the developers. Nothing motivates people to do unpleasant things like money will (see: the porn industry and Fear Factor).

That's why the commercial software development model is superior in terms of responding to the desires of ordinary users.

Gave up on CUPS

[British]

I admit, I was stumped with the whole setting up the printer in CUPs. I had a friend who works in Linux daily set it up. We had to set up a few test printers, and then try to navigate to the IP address of it(on 2K for internet printing).

After all was said and done, any printout I made printed about 90% of the page, and then it was garbage city. And as a general rule with messed-up printings, all garbage that prints out a form feed every few lines or so. So it's not one page of garbage characters, it's a stack of them.

Eventually I just gave up, and will be just using a Win98 box with sharing for all print jobs.

Re:Answer

[topham]

No, not every OS X Compatible printer is supported by CUPS.

I can print to by S330 just fine from OS X. I cannot on the other hand print to it over my network. CUPS doesn't support it. (might now, haven't checked recently).

And for some reason Windows won't print to it on my Mac, so I've been swapping the USB cable back and forth. Kinda stupid.

amazing but slow on a large network

[TimMann]

Mandr{ake,iva}'s printer admin thingie actually runs nmap to sniff your network and find all printers exported by all machines using any protocols it knows how to talk. It's pretty amazing, but it took 10 minutes or more to run on the building network here, during which time the GUI didn't repaint and appeared hung.

I would have killed it in disgust, thinking it really was hung, but first I did a "top" to see if I could tell what it was doing. Then my jaw dropped when I saw it running nmap and starting and stopping many other processes to try to connect to the open ports it was finding, so I let it finish and was fairly impressed. It really needs a progress bar, or better, to have printers pop up in the GUI as they are found.

Re:Needs to be as simple as windows printing.

[johnw]

Whilst I agree that setting up a CUPS server is still a pain - mostly because of the lack of decent documentation - once your server is up and running then workstation is even easier than the process described for Windows in the parent article.

All you have to do is - nothing at all! I can take a virgin PC, connect it to my network, boot with a Knoppix CD, start OpenOffice.org and all my printers are there and ready to use. No configuration, no drivers, no \\servername\printername. As soon as I do File=>Print in OpenOffice.org I get a list of the printers which are configured and ready for me to use. No user intervention of any sort required.

Yes, penetrating the fog of CUPS documentation to get your server(s) set up is a prime pain, but once the server is there then CUPS has Windows printing beaten hollow for ease of end-user use.

John

Re:Configuring CUPS

[rco3]

it's called webmin. install it, run it. go to it at:

https://localhost:10000

You might be surprised at how much stuff you can do from there - like, pretty much everything.

Re:Answer

[w0lver]

Did you try Gimp Print, it works for most USB printers. It works for my Lexamrk laser printer but not my HP inkjet, so YMMV... http://gimp-print.sourceforge.net/

Most of Eric's comments are NOT about CUPS...

[printman]

Most of Eric's comments are NOT about CUPS, but instead about the various GUIs that have been written to run on top of CUPS.

Regarding the CUPS web interface, there is actually a LOT of development happening for the new CUPS 1.2 release to make things work much more smoothly, ask the user less questions when they don't need to be asked, and move the web interface to a more task-oriented UI instead of the current function-oriented UI.

For example, in the new web interface the "add printer" button will list any printers that CUPS discovers automatically ("Epson Stylus RX300 on USB port") - you just click on "add listed printers" to add the printers, or "add printer manually" to add one manually. Similarly, printer sharing, remote administration, etc. are now check boxes on the administration page instead of going through the cupsd.conf file.

Anyways, good changes ARE coming for the native CUPS interfaces, and I only hope that the Linux distributors follow suit with their GUIs...

Re:Needs to be as simple as windows printing.

[h4rr4r]

it is easy if you want to print from a window box to cups net work printer set up and instead of \\servername\printername use \\IPaddress\printername:631

Are you serious?

[geekoid]

I haven't set up a printer in Linux for years. and when I did it didn't support all the printer features. I am sure thats changed, and I see that it might have become as easy as windows,
But easier then windows? I bought a printer, plugged it in and it worked. Never took the driver out of the box.
How is it easier then that? did Linus come to your house and put in on your desk for you?

Coincidentaly, I installed a network printer at the office. My desktop Win 2k machine just picked it up.

Re:Answer

[Anonymous Coward]

Try HPIJS for OSX - http://www.linuxprinting.org/macosx/hpijs/ Works nice for me.

Re:Answer

[bahamat]

The reason some printers work on OS X and not on Linux is because CUPS allows running binary print filters. Remember, CUPS has nothing to do with preparing a data stream for printing. It is merely a queue manager. All it does to prepare a data stream is to hand it off to the filter program.

Many printer manufacturers use Carbon filters for OS X. Game over.

Now about ESR's comments, I never really saw what was so hard about it. Not that I'm claiming to be incredibly smarter than him, but the hardest part of setting up a printer using CUPS under Debian was knowing that I had to point my browser at http://localhost:631/ [localhost]. After that, what's so hard about clicking on Printers, Add Printer, then select the make and model? Seems pretty easy to me.

Maybe ESR wasn't using the CUPS web interface, but instead using some GNOME/KDE front end. Well then that's the problem because GNOME & KDE both suck anyway. For that matter, the OS X GUI front end to CUPS isn't all that great either. Really, the only great thing about CUPS on OS X is that when you plug in your printer, it just works and doesn't need to be configured.

Re:Answer

[phliar]

No, not every OS X Compatible printer is supported by CUPS.

And vice versa. MacOS X doesn't support the HP LaserJet 1150 although it's supported by CUPS.

If you dig through the CUPS documentation you learn that the 1150 is a PCL 6 printer so if you select "LaserJet 6" in the print setup tool you can print to the 1150. But Apple can't really expect Grandma (or even my non-geek lawyer friend) to figure that out.

(I may be misremembering it being PCL 6 and LaserJet 6, it might have been 5.)

Re:Answer

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

Three little letters:
K D E

You want a pretty little shell [kde.org], install the thing.

Re:Answer

[wobblie]

Remember, CUPS has nothing to do with preparing a data stream for printing. It is merely a queue manager. All it does to prepare a data stream is to hand it off to the filter program.

This is completely incorrect. CUPS is a full featured RIP and postscript processor. It does support arbitrary binary printing, however, and this is exactly what happens when you print to cups from windows via samba. Please see the cups documentation [samba.org].

If cups is just a "dumb spooler", explain lease how the heck it can print pdf, jpeg, hp-gl, tiff, and hundreds of other formats directly to your postscript printer?

If you don't have a postscript printer, yes, you must use a ppd that calls a intermediary driver (e.g., hpijs) that cups just passes the job to.

Re:Answer

[michrech]

I believe you are mistaken, however, I should have been abit more descriptive.

What I meant is that it is similar to the steps to manually setting up a printer in Windows (just going through my steps should have been clue enough, but you obviously missed it).

As for your description, well, it's wrong for about 100% of the "cheap-o" printers that many people will buy, and wrong for the rest, too.

There has never been a NEW printer, from about 2000 on, that I have been able to install by "plug it on, maybee install software, and print".

The steps are (usually) as follows:

1) Put in software CD. Run through setup software and wait for it to tell you to plug the printer in (this is for USB Printers -- most LPT printers -- getting more and more rare, especially in the sub-$200 range)

2) Once software is installed, you MIGHT be able to print, or you might have to reboot. In either case, you should be good.

*every* printer I have attempted to install by first "plugging it in" then choosing the driver on the CD has put something to the effect of "You must run SETUP" in the 'select your printer model' list.

Nice try, though.

Re:Answer

[Master of Transhuman]

"Windows steps:
- Plug in printer
- (Possibly) install software from CD
- Print"

Odd - I think that's what I did when I recently installed Mandrake 10.1 (leaving out the install software part).

My Epson Stylus C60 inkjet works fine.

Re:Answer

[chthon]

ESR's comments where not about adding a printer, but about setting up CUPS to be able to share and print on the network.

And he was right, I had exactly the same problem as he, because the default CUPS installation restricts the usage to the local address 127.0.0.1.

You cannot change that from the web interface, you have to delve through the CUPS configuration file.

ESR's *actual* problem with CUPS.

[Kyle]

From what I recall was "How do I setup CUPS on a new PC to print to a CUPS queue that's already setup on another PC?"

Yes, the tools to setup a printer connected directly to your Linux
box make it pretty damned simple. But there was no visible way to print to a remote queue.

Now, the answer is, that CUPS can broadcast the queues it has, and any other CUPS server on the network can pick up those broadcasted print queues.

HOWEVER, at the time, the only way to get CUPS to broadcast it's print queues was to go into the config file, and turn on this barely documented feature. And then you had to tell the other servers to listen, using the same method, edit the config file.

The web interface had no facility to turn this sharing on. Recent versions of MacOS X do have an option to share printers or to look for shared printers, so obviously they've taken advantage of this functionality, it wasn't there initially.