A brief guide to the printers at ESSC

Web interface

The easiest way to view information about the printers is using the print server web interface. There are currently two print servers, one on odin and one on sweeney, which both use the Common Unix Printing System (CUPS) to manage print queues and printer settings. These can be accessed at the following URLs.

http://sweeney.nerc-essc.ac.uk:631

http://odin.nerc-essc.ac.uk:631

Sweeney is now the main CUPS server at ESSC. The CUPS service on odin will be kept running but will not be maintained or updated. The CUPS interface allows users to see which printers are available, where they are, what their default settings are and what print jobs are waiting to print on them. It also allows users to cancel, move or reprint jobs that have stopped or failed, not just their own but also those belonging to other users.

Printer information

The first place to look for information about the printers is the CUPS web interface. Here is some extra information that is not provided by CUPS. Note that all the printers except kmcolour2 and hpcolour support double sided printing (or "duplex printing"), and duplex is now the default for all the printers that support it.

Transparencies

ESSC does not have any printers capable of printing transparencies, but the Meteorology Department has several that can be used by ESSC staff and students. Information about Meteorology Department printers, including transparency printing, can be found here. The nearest transparency printer to ESSC, called flan_t, is in room 1U24, and accepts print jobs from ESSC via CUPS. I usually walk past room 1U24 on the way to the Met. department; it is on the right hand side on the first floor, just after entering the corridor from the stairwell separating Phychology from Meteorology. The printer is a Xerox Phaser 8560DN, which is on the LHS as you go into the room. When you send a job to the printer it will show an error on the console saying "load Tray 1" or something like that. Tray 1 is the manual feeder and is accessed by pulling down the front cover. The transparencies are on the shelf to the left of the printer. You can check the jobs and status using the printer's web interface (http://flan.rdg.ac.uk). If you want to print on paper rather than on transparencies, feed paper into the manual feeder instead of transparencies. I tried selecting "Tray 2" in the printer properties before sending a print job but it still tried to load from the manual feeder.

Windows printer drivers

Windows users now only need one printer driver in order to connect to all the printers at ESSC via CUPS. This type of driver is called a universal printer driver (UPD), and most printer manufacturers have their own, for connecting to any printer in their range. However, some of them also have the ability to talk to any PostScript capable printer or printer server, i.e. any printer printer or server that understands the PostScript printing language. There are several to choose from and I don't know if they all work with CUPS, but I have tested the HP UPD which can usually be downloaded from here. Choose the appropriate operating system and architecture (e.g. "Microsoft Windows 7 (64-bit)"), then download "HP Universal Print Driver for Windows PostScript ". Double click on the file you have downloaeded to run the driver installer, and when prompted click on "Unzip", which unpacks the files and immediately starts the driver installation wizard. Accept the license agreement and then choose "Dynamic Mode" before clicking the "Install" button.

Once the UPD is installed, follow these instructions for connecting to one of the CUPS printers at ESSC.

• Go to the CUPS web page and click on "Manage printers". Find the CUPS name of the printer you want to connect to.
• From the Windows Start Menu select "Printers and Faxes" (Windows XP) or "Devices and Printers" (Windows Vista/7)
• To start the new printer wizard, select "Add a printer" from the File menu (Windows XP) or follow the "Add a printer" link (Windows 7).
• Add a network printer using the following URL, substituting CUPS_PRINTER_NAME for the name of the printer you want to connect to (e.g. cacolour). Don't forget to add the ":631".
  • http://sweeney.nerc-essc.ac.uk:631/printers/CUPS_PRINTER_NAME
  • The steps to get to this stage are slightly different in the different versions of Windows. Windows 7 tries to find printers on the network itself, so make sure you click on "The printer I want isn't listed" in order to use the UPD/CUPS solution.
• When choosing the driver select "HP" as the manufacturer and "HP Universal Printing PS" as the printer model.
• Wait a few minutes for the new printer to be installed.

Mac OS X printer drivers

The easiest way to set up CUPS printing in Mac OS is via the CUPS web interface, which can be accessed via any browser at http://localhost:631. From the "Administration" menu choose "Add printer", then select the internet printing option ("http://...") and use the CUPS printer URLs described above in the Windows printing section.

Mac OS X 10.6 has two generic drivers that work with the CUPS printers, although they only provide a restricted range of printing options compared to the propriatary drivers. There weren't many propriatary drivers installed by default on the new iMacs, and there was no support at all for Xerox and Canon printers. In contrast, HP printer support was quite good, and drivers for all our HP printers were already installed. These can be found via the CUPS interface when adding the HP printers. I used the following generic drivers for the other printers.

• cacolour: Generic PostScript
• kmcolour: Generic PostScript
• kmcolour2: Generic PostScript
• xerox: Generic PostScript

To enable the full range of printing options for each printer it is necessary to download and install printer specific drivers from the manufacturers' web sites.

-- DanBretherton - 20 Jul 2011