Introduction to CUPS
The Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) is a print spooler and
associated utilities. It is based on the "Internet Printing
Protocol" and provides printing services to most PostScript and
raster printers.
Package Information
CUPS Dependencies
Recommended
libjpeg-6b,
libpng-1.2.12, and LibTIFF-3.8.2
Optional
pkg-config-0.20, D-BUS-0.62, OpenLDAP-2.3.27, OpenSSL-0.9.8d or GnuTLS (which needs libgpg-error, libgcrypt and opencdk, in that order), Linux-PAM-0.99.4.0, PHP-5.1.4, Python-2.4.4, JDK-1.5.0_10, OpenSLP,
libpaper, libacl (requires libattr), HTMLDOC, and Valgrind
(optionally used if running the test suites)
User Notes: http://wiki.linuxfromscratch.org/blfs/wiki/cups
Installation of CUPS
Create an lp user, as CUPS will create some files owned by this
user. (The lp user is the default
used by CUPS, but may be changed
to a different user by passing a parameter to the
configure script.)
Use the following command as the root
user:
useradd -c "Print Service User" -d /dev/null -g lp -s /bin/false -u 9 lp
Install CUPS by running the
following commands:
./configure &&
make
To test the results, issue: make
check. This will run a basic test suite without
any load testing. If you wish to run the tests specifying
non-default parameters, issue: make
test. Note that the “torture load testing” test uses more
resources than those displayed in the prompt.
Now, as the root user:
make install
The man files are installed in
compressed (.gz) format. If desired,
use the following commands to uncompress them:
gunzip -v /usr/share/man/man{\
1/{cancel,cups{-config,test{dsc,ppd}},\
lp{,options,passwd,q,rm,r,stat}}.1,\
5/{{classes,client,cups-snmp,cupsd,printers,subscriptions,mailto}.conf,\
mime.{convs,types}}.5,\
7/{backend,filter}.7,\
8/{accept,cups{d,addsmb,enable,-{deviced,driverd,lpd,polld,}},\
lp{admin,info,move,c}}.8}.gz &&
rm -v /usr/share/man/man8/{reject,cupsdisable}.8.gz &&
ln -v -s accept.8 /usr/share/man/man8/reject.8 &&
ln -v -s cupsenable.8 /usr/share/man/man8/cupsdisable.8
Configuring CUPS
Configuration of CUPS is
dependent on the type of printer and can be complex. Generally,
PostScript printers are easier. For detailed instructions on
configuration and use of CUPS,
see http://www.cups.org/documentation.php. The
Software Administrators Manual and Software Users Manual are
particularly useful.
For non-PostScript printers to print with CUPS, you need to install ESP Ghostscript-8.15.2 to convert PostScript to
raster images and a driver (e.g., from Gimp-Print-4.2.7) to convert the resulting
raster images to a form that the printer understands. Foomatic drivers use Ghostscript to convert
PostScript to a printable form directly, but this is considered
to be a hack by CUPS developers.
During the installation, CUPS
added startup files in /etc/rc.d.
These scripts will work in most cases, but will fail if you
provide printers to Samba
clients. Additionally, they are not consistent with standard
LFS style scripts. Replace the installed scripts with the
scripts and symlinks included in the blfs-bootscripts-20060910
package:
make install-cups